My family was reading scripture last night and my son was reading Romans 9.
As he was starting the first few verses my daughter said she didn't understand.
She said that just as Paul started to explain his argument in the chapter through Bible Stories.
Paul explains how the doctrine of divine election destroys human boasting through several narratives from Genesis and Exodus...
Abraham and Isaac
Jacob and Esau
Moses and Pharaoh
Each of these very basic Bible Stories reveal the doctrine of salvation through God's sheer and sovereign grace. Furthermore they undercut all grounds for human pride and presumption.
As John the Baptizer said (Luke 3:8), God can turn stones into sons of Abraham so the human lineage itself has no claim upon God's favor, though God's favor may choose to bless a lineage by sovereignly converting some of its members and giving promises of salvation to the rest of a lineage if they will respond in faith to God's promise.
Jesus recognizes that his opponents are simultaneously the offspring of Abraham while bearing the family resemblance of their true father, the devil in John 8:31-38 and anticipates Paul's view of the plight of hardened, boastful Israel in this regard.
My point in noting this however is that Romans - considered a long and at at times abstract doctrinal tour de force - is fundamentally a restatement of basic Bible Stories organized to demonstrate that all are under sin and that salvation is available to all on the same basis - the sovereign grace of God.
We make the interpretation of Romans (and other New Testament books) harder than it should be because we approach them de novo and without being steeped in the basic Bible Stories that form the backbone of God's revelation as it unfolds in history.
We treat them as incidental when for Paul they are essential!
Even the Corinthian church - for all its carnality - seems to have a better grasp of the history of salvation we call "Bible Stories" than most Christians.
Too many "introductions" to the Christian faith begin willy nilly in the Bible without laying any overarching foundation of Bible Stories.
But even the most doctrinal book of the Bible - Romans - demands we internalize Bible Stories or we will never understand it's message.
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