Use your tools the way Paul does: To bend your words and thoughts toward magnifying Christ, His grace, His person, and His work. Biblical preaching preaches like the Bible does.
If you are a preacher who has committed to focusing on just the epistles for a year (or three), you will come to this week’s text with a sense of déjà vu. It has only been a couple of months since you treated Romans 5, because the Three-Year Lectionary read most of the chapter over the first and third weeks in Lent this year (and will revisit it the second week in Lent next year!).
It may be tempting but resist the allure of an “easy tweak” on previous work. Do not go back to the pot and rehash a Lenten sermon for your summer context, preacher (even if you happen to be supplying pulpit service as a one-off sub for another preacher on vacation, thinking that your audience “will not mind a rerun if it is new to them!”). Warming up old material may be tempting, but the drawbacks outweigh the perceived short-term gains any given week. For one thing, the context and occasion are entirely different than the original one for which you crafted that dusty old artefact. Sermons are not a one-size-fits-all, and you owe it to your audience to give them due consideration. That is your other-focused, audience-focused encouragement to go back to the drawing board. It serves your neighbor. But for another thing, you owe it to yourself as a crafter. One more hour at the notepad, in the Word, in meditation, can only help you. There are more nuances, more messages, more directions and sermons in any text than just one or two. This is even more true with the rich, rich texts of the Romans pericopes. It will only help you as a theologian and a Christian to come back humbly to the text and start all over again. Do not shortchange yourself the benefit you will receive from a fresh study. The Lord has something new to teach you. So, come and learn!
The pericope this week is the middle ten verses of Romans 5, starting right after the Pauline gradatio which climaxes with hope (suffering producing perseverance, and the like) at Romans 5:1-5. We begin, instead, with our own weakness and the miracle of Christ’s sacrificial death on our behalf even while we were sinners (Romans 5:6-8). Reconciliation by His blood is sufficient, but our cup overflows, because we identify not only with Christ’s death but also His resurrected life (Romans 5:9-11). The pericope then concludes after a grammatical diversion (Paul seems to start with one thought then detour to and dilate on another). Paul distinguishes between the trespass (sin and the death it produces, universally) and the free gift of Christ (grace, again universally), pointing to Adam as a type of Christ. It is universal destruction and salvation, universal condemnation and justification, resting on the act of one man in either case (Romans 5:12-15).
This week, instead of trying to focus on just one image or blowing up a theme or two, we are going to talk about rhetoric in general. If you would like a little deeper thematic or exegetical dive, feel free to scare up the blog posts on those Lenten pericopes from a couple of months ago. But since Paul’s persuasive skills are on display, it gives us a moment to pause and think specifically about how our own biblical preaching relies on human words, human communication, human tried and true and time-tested means of convincing folks logically, emotionally, and ethically. Sorry if any of this sounds at all eggheaded, but even noticing (not to mention using!) rhetorical tools to your benefit is central to sermon craft, so we will look at just a couple that are present here in the Romans 5 pericope, since they are well on display! Paul shows us that teaching and preaching is far more than a doctrine download. Verbal artistry in his teaching inspires our own biblical preaching, to adorn beyond bare exposition. Rhetoric should have its purpose, of course, and the end, the goal, should always be to deliver the Christ clearly for the faith and life of your hearer.
Rhetoric should have its purpose, of course, and the end, the goal, should always be to deliver the Christ clearly for the faith and life of your hearer.
Consider the parallelisms Paul employs. All of chapter 5 runs on sharp oppositions as he contrasts weak and strong, ungodly and righteous, sinner and justified, death and life, Adam and Christ, all to demonstrate the superiority of Christ’s saving work. Adam serves as the foil that magnifies how hyperabundant Christ’s grace is. Notice the “more” and “much more” language Paul uses (Romans 5:9, 10, 11, 15). This is classic rhetorical amplification, meant to make the hearer feel the lopsidedness of Christ’s abundance over against Adam’s ruin. You can learn from that instinct, preacher. Do not merely mention grace but magnify it through deliberate comparison and escalation.
I always trip over the Romans 5:12-13 bit because awkward grammar invites attention. There are a couple of points here to celebrate though. The first is when we read scripture, we read real language, not self-consciously classical prose composition, not Greek 101 freshman exempla of “proper” grammar which can be graded with a red pen and earn an “A.” Just as our everyday language, even in contemporary correspondence via letter or email, rarely conforms to the banality of a first-grade primer, so also the actual living language of first century Greek reflects the complexity, variation, and vibrancy of its human fingerprints. The second is Paul breaking off mid-sentence or mid-thought, only to fill the balance of his argument with what seems to be an afterthought, is a rhetorical move best understood not as a mistake or a detour in thought, but, rather, as craft, as a specific arrangement with an emotional punch. Notice how it does not make sense to start with “Just as sin came into the world through one man,” without finishing the thought with a balanced conclusion like, “So also sin is forgiven through one man,” or something like that (grammarians would call this a protasis left hanging without an apodosis). Instead, it seems as if the Apostle got distracted by that sin thought and had to dig deeper. His interruption creates tension and anticipation.
The unique, literary device Paul is employing rests somewhere between what we classically call aposiopesis and anacoluthon. Aposiopesis is when a speaker cuts off mid-sentence what they were about to say, likely because they are emotionally wrought. Think of when the god of the sea, Neptune, alarmed at the storm whipped up by Juno to wreck the hero Aeneas, threatens the waves: quos ego... (Virgil Aeneid 1.135). Or, if you do not go in for Roman epic, think instead of Moe from the Three Stooges winding up his fist at his brothers and muttering just the start of the threat, “Why, I oughta...!” Anacoluthon, on the other hand, abruptly shifts the syntax of a sentence and continues with a thought in a different direction. The disjointed thought could denote, say, stream of consciousness, or reflect drama or emotional distraction (or even comedy, as you will recognize if you are familiar with the “indecisive” persona of Jeff Goldblum).
Preachers often fear sounding repetitive. Paul understands repetition as one of the chief tools he has for persuasion and teaching.
In other words, preacher and perennial Bible student, I suggest Paul is doing something more than simply representing a colloquial, conversational cadence in his argument here. Rather, the grammatical gaffe itself points up the persuasive power of the Apostle and the emotion he invests in his argument about the Law, sin, and death. The very point of this piece is to reinforce for his reader that you do not need Torah to sin, and death is the proof of it. Death reigned from Adam to Moses, over the original sinner and the heirs to Adam's original sin. It is a setup and knock down as clear as the contrast between the only conceivable human exception he offers for martyrdom in Romans 5:6-7, that blows up with the divine exception in 5:8: God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Like a Jewish rabbi, Paul is arguing at each point with a lesser-to-greater analogy: gift not like the trespass (Romans 5:15); if many died... how much more has the grace of God abounded (Romans 5:15); free gift is not like the trespass (Romans 5:16); judgment brought condemnation, but gift brought justification (Romans 5:16). It is a rhetorical pattern present at the end of our pericope that he will repeat several more times through the rest of the chapter. Paul also employs basic repetition, making the echoes of key words resonate for the hearer and reader throughout; “one man,” “death,” “grace,” “gift,” and “trespass.” Repetition like this does not render the words redundant as much as it creates emphasis and something memorable that will stick for the hearer and reader. Preachers often fear sounding repetitive. Paul understands repetition as one of the chief tools he has for persuasion and teaching.
Finally, consider the great contrast between the feelings freighted in words like “weak,” “ungodly,” “sinners,” and “enemies,” pointing up the bleakness of humanity, and, on the other hand, the triumphant chord struck with Paul’s declarations of reconciliation and grace. The emotional swing is itself a rhetorical strategy. Bad news intensified leads to good news landing with more weight (after all, where sin did abound, there did grace abound all the more!). Preacher, notice that Paul’s rhetoric is not self-serving. The purpose of harnessing that kind of emotional force is always to deliver Christ and the salvation He brings to sinners.
I will focus on just a couple of rhetorical points here to encourage you to reflect on your own preaching. Use your tools the way Paul does: To bend your words and thoughts toward magnifying Christ, His grace, His person, and His work. Biblical preaching preaches like the Bible does. The Holy Spirit employs these words spoken and written to convert sinners into saints, to kill and make alive. Let us use reason in service to the scriptures, not lording over our Lord’s slaying and vivifying words with our own narrow notions of slick speech and potent persuasion, but taking a lesson from the very human-fingerprinted and highly effective and salvific Word of God in Christ. Our lesson is to engage freely with the panoply of human communication modes invited by holy writ, including the emotionally wrought grammatical gaffe and syntactic slippage of Romans 5:12-13, the rabbinic stepladder of lesser to greater, the repetition and parallelism, the emotional swing that depends on diction, all of it. In other words, do not be afraid of letting the pathos pop out of the pulpit. Do not shy away from logical rapid-fire arguments. And, lastly, respect your people and do not let yourself get stuck in a rut rhetorically. Offer some variety! It does not just adorn your pulpit time with more and different color. It has a more pointed purpose: To assist the delivery and reception of the promises God is making to your listener in Christ!
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 5:6-15.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 5:6-15.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
