Chapter # 11 Paragraph # 6 Study # 1
June 23, 2019
Humble, Texas
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Thesis: Material wealth is at once both extremely dangerous and profoundly helpful.
Introduction: We have come in our studies of God's Revelation of His Larger Plan to the end of this segment of Paul's letter to the Romans. This "end" is a kind of "outburst" of praise regarding God in respect to His wisdom and knowledge. The implication is that this is the legitimate response of believing people to this unveiling by God through His apostle of an aspect of His Plans for humanity that was unknown and unknowable before it began to be developed in history and explained by His messenger.
That it was unknown and unknowable is declared by Paul's characterization of it as a "mystery" that was kept secret from the beginning of creation to the first century. That it was initiated in the actual events of history before it was explained indicates that it would be better understood if the explanation had historical events upon which to establish it as "valid" [Note here Acts 11:1-18].
That Paul uses it as a basis for the elimination of "boastfulness, high-mindedness, and conceit" indicates that it is a critical doctrine since those three profound tendencies are resident within every person and are deeply destructive to "relationships", particularly those that have to do with "relating to God" and then those which have to do with "relating to one another". Since the Kingdom of God is, at root, a relational kingdom of which righteousness is the sceptre, this doctrine is most critical.
Interestingly, it was the historical development of this reality that set the Church up for its first most contentious conflict. That conflict concerned how the Church was to understand "the way of salvation", and it was the inclusion of the Gentiles, who had never been under "Law", that pressed the Church to decide that issue in its first "Church Council", recorded for us in Acts 15. The Jews, under "Law", had a deeply entrenched commitment to "salvation by obedience", and the Gentiles, without the "Law", were clearly given the Holy Spirit by "Faith" apart from "legal performance".
All of this came together in Paul's explanation in Romans 9-11 and the result was his outburst of praise regarding "the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God". Thus, we are going to consider this "outburst" in some detail.
- I. The First Issue: "Depth".
- A. The "difficulty" in a great deal of our lack of understanding regarding God and how we relate to Him consists primarily of the fact that "relating" is a non-material issue that forces us to have to go to "figures of speech" for "understanding".
- 1. This is a fact to which Jesus pointed in His conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:12).
- a. He introduced the "problem" by telling Nicodemus that he had to be "born again", an event that required the use of physical birth to lay the groundwork for understanding the materially intangible "birth by the Spirit" (John 3:8).
- b. This is the use of "metaphor", using the physical to explain the immaterial.
- 2. The problem in Romans 9-11 is fundamentally "relational" as indicated by both the antagonism of the Jews to the Gospel and the reactionary antagonism of the Gentiles toward the Jews.
- B. "Depth" is a physical factor, with profound metaphysical implications.
- 1. In the "physical world", "depth" has to do with a physical distance from the "top" of a physical entity to its "bottom".
- a. Of the three uses of this word by the Gospels, two are in reference to the lack of a sufficient distance between the top of the soil upon which seed is sown and the bottom of that soil as a determining factor in whether that seed can access sufficient nutrients and moisture to develop into a plant (Matthew 13:5; Mark 4:5).
- b. The third use is in Luke 5:4 where the Sea of Galilee is actually divided into two parts, one of which is called "The Deep" simply because there is a significant "distance" from top to bottom.
- 2. As a metaphor, "depth" has to do with the difference between a superficial grasp of both the meaning and significance of a reality and a comprehensive grasp that reaches as "deep" as the foundations of that reality.
- a. As a metaphor, "depth" is most fundamentally a matter of extraordinary complexity in regard to how much is involved in the movement from superficiality to the profound foundations.
- b. As a complexity, there is some level of "danger" involved.
- 1) This is suggested by Romans 8:39 because the notion is that we might be separated from the love of God by some "level" of complexity that we may never have considered.
- 2) This is actually declared in Revelation 2:24 where the reference is to "the deep things of Satan" and means the foundations of his "plausible deceits".
- 3) This is also involved in 2 Corinthians 8:2 "deep poverty" is presented as a potential block to "a wealth of liberality".
- c. Alternatively, there is a significant level of possible "blessedness" involved.
- 1) In 1 Corinthians 2:10 Paul referred to the Spirit's ability to search out the "deep things of God" and then pass on to us a kind of summary of what we need to know so that we are in harmony with the "deep things".
- 2) And Ephesians 3:18 refers to the "Love of God" as something with extraordinary boundaries that make life extremely blessed for those who get a handle on it.
- 3. The bottom line of "depth" as metaphor is that it presents a rather large block of reality that is simply "below the radar" of most people most of the time.
- II. The Second Issue: "Riches".