Romans 8:18-39: Steps 1-4

What I’m doing in this little demonstration is showing you (more or less) how I go about studying a passage of scripture if I really want to know what it means. I like to do in-depth study by writing an interpretive paraphrase. To see the general procedures I’m using to do the interpretive paraphase of this passage, go here.

Step 1 is to place the passage in the context of the book of Romans. Here’s a really rough summary of the book of Romans up through chapter 8:

• Everyone is sinful and as a consequence everyone is under the wrath of God (1:18-3:20).
• But there is a solution to the predicament we are all in: Christ saves people from the wrath of God by justifying them through faith (3:21-5:21),
• And saves them from the power of sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. (6-8)

The previous portion of chapter 8 is about life in the Spirit. Directly before this passage, Paul is writing about sonship in the Spirit. If we are sons, we’re told, we are joint-heirs with Christ, that is, if “we suffer with him so that we may be also glorified with him.”

Step 2 is to paragraph the passage. I looked at many translations and several of them paragraph it in the same way.  I’ll just copy them.

• 8:18-24
  
• 8:26-30
• 8:31-39

Steps 3 and 4 are to copy one verse in the chosen translations and underline the key words and phrases. Here are these steps done for verse 18.

• ESV: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time^(A) are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
• NASB: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time ^(A)are not worthy to be compared with the ^(B)glory that is to be revealed to us.
• NET: For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared²³ to the glory that will be revealed to us.
• NLT: Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

You can probably see why I’ve identified these particular words and phrases as key ones, except perhaps in the case of  “to us.” I underlined that because while I was copying and pasting the verse from various translations I noticed that the NIV and NKJV both say “in us” instead of “to us,” so I thought I’d like to look into that difference a little more.

Next up I’ll move on to step 5, examining the key words in verse 18 one by one.

Any questions or comments on what I’ve done so far? 

Lavender Charm

Photo by Andrew Stark 

 

Here in the Yukon, the first sign of spring’s new life is the lavender of the pasque flowers.* We call them crocuses—they look a bit like crocuses and bloom first thing in the spring like crocuses do—but they’re not really crocuses.

 

Several of the common names for this wildflower, like May Day flower, Easter flower, and spring crocus, point to its early blooming. We’d have to include pasque flower in that list, too, since the word pasque refers to Easter or Passover. The Blackfoot Indians called them napi, which translates to “old man,” and if you look at the photo above, you see why they found this name appropriate. More officially, they’re called pulsatilla vulgaris, which makes them sound a little naughty, but vulgaris simply means that they are the vulgar (or common) form of the pulsatilla family, the flower family so-named because of the pulsing dance the blossoms do in the spring wind.

These wind-waving beauties aren’t called common for nothing. You’ll find wild pasque flowers across western North America from Utah up through Alaska and as far west as Illinois. They prefer the prairies as habitat, and two prairie places, South Dakota and Manitoba, have designated the pasque flower as their official flower. Here in the mountains we look for them in clearings of wooded foothills.

Some people try to transplant these lovely lavender wildflowers to their home gardens, but more often than not, it doesn’t work. These plants prefer hard, untilled soil, and the soil found in flower beds is just too cushy for them. My neighbor with the perfect yard and garden managed to grow some pasque flowers in her wildflower garden, but she had to wait several years for the plants to bloom.

 

It’s because the pasque flower doesn’t grow well in cultivated soil that there is some worry that as more and more prairie is tilled for farming, the pasque flower will eventually disappear altogether from the grasslands. Since most of the areas where crocuses grow in the Yukon are no good for farming, and naturally hard soil is our specialty, there’s not much chance they’ll die out here.

 

The biggest danger for the Yukon pasque flower is little girls, who love to bring them home to their mothers by the ice-cream-bucketsful. At least that’s the way things went at our house.

*The green in the photo is the evergreen bearberry plant. 

Sunday's Hymn

For the next few weeks, I’ll use one of the congregational hymns I’ve sung in church in the morning as the Sunday hymn. Today, we didn’t sing out of the hymnal at all—that always makes me a little sad—but we did sing this song, which I’d say would hold it’s own, substance-wise and quality-wise, against any of the hymns in the hymn book. And when Stuart Townend wrote it, he was indeed intending to write a hymn.

How Deep the Father’s Love for Us 

 

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss –
The Father turns His face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life –
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything,
No gifts, no power, no wisdom;
But I will boast in Jesus Christ,
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer;
But this I know with all my heart –
His wounds have paid my ransom.

You can hear it sung in this video, which is one of the few versions I could find that was not sung in a breathy female voice. (There! I’ve let you in on another of my musical pet peeves.)

Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Trinity Sunday at Magic Statistics
• Safely Through Another Week at The Happy Wonderer
• Jesus! What a Friend for Sinner! at Hiraeth
  
• I Sing the Might Power of God at Seasoning of the Heart
• Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me at Whatever Things…
• Crown Him with Many Crowns at Field Stone Cottage
• Lord’s Day 20, 2008 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Happy the Man Whose Cautious Feet  at JoythruChrist
• Trinity Sunday at Conjubilant With Song

Have you posted a hymn today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar and I’ll add your post to the list.

 

Update on Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 5:42PM by rebecca

Kim of The Upward Call posts the words to Jesus, My Lord, My Savior.