Reading Between the Lines

We are fond of quoting 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Yet we sometimes do not find it easy to understand, in practice, how all Scripture really is profitable for us. How do we profit from knowing the details of the dimensions and materials of the Old Testament tabernacle (see Ex. 26)? Or how do the lists of names in 1 Chronicles 1–9 contribute to our Christian life?

The answer often lies in reading “between the lines” of Scripture. The “surface meaning,” the direct ideas the authors are trying to communicate, may not always be very relevant for us. But if we look more closely, we usually will discover that the passage assumes certain principles, or hints at broader ideas, that are very relevant indeed.

Scriptural passages communicate God’s truth to us in different ways or at different levels. On one level, for instance, Exodus 26 teaches us how to build a tabernacle. But at another level, the fact that a tabernacle must be built, the care with which it must be built, and many of its specific features teach us a great deal about the problem of human sin and God’s grace in overcoming that sin problem. Scripture teaches us not only through its explicit propositions but also through the assumptions that underlie those propositions.

This kind of Scriptural reading between the lines helps us to understand how Romans 16:1–16 can be profitable for us. This is a passage that we probably usually ignore when we read or teach Romans. All it contains is a list of commendations and greetings of people in the early Christian world. What possible relevance would these greetings—directed to 26 individuals, two families, and three households—have for the modern Christian? But if we look at certain assumptions that the passage makes, we find, in fact, that it is quite relevant. In this list of greetings are two implications about the nature of the first-century church that are profitable for us as we think about what the twenty-first century church should look like.

First, the names themselves are very interesting. Names in the ancient world had meaning; they were not just euphonious tags given to people rather arbitrarily. Abram’s name is changed to Abraham to signal that he will be the father of many nations; Jesus is given His name because it signifies the salvation that He will bring to the people of God. And so scholars have carefully investigated the names of Romans 16 for clues that they might furnish to the nature of the Roman church. They have concluded that most of the names are Gentile names, while several are Jewish. Many of the people were slaves or “freedmen,” a Roman social description of former slaves. Others, however, appear to have been fairly wealthy, owning homes and traveling extensively around the eastern Mediterranean (Priscilla and Aquila, vv. 3–4). The Roman Christians came from very different backgrounds, with a predominance, perhaps, of “lower-class” people.

Drawing lessons from the composition of the Roman church for the church today is, of course, difficult. But the diversity of the church in Rome reminds us that Christ is for all kinds of people. Diversity of ethnic background and socio-economic status in the church should be cause to praise God for the breadth of His grace. And we also should prize such diversity for all that we can learn from Christians who are very different than us.

Second, of the 26 individuals mentioned by name in these verses, 10 are women. It is, of course, not surprising that many of the Christians in Rome were women. But what is interesting is that so many of the women are commended for their service to Christ. Six of them are commended for their labor “in the Lord”—Phoebe (vv. 1–2), Priscilla (v. 3), Junia (v. 7), Tryphena (v. 12), Tryphosa (v. 12), and Persis (v. 12). Phoebe is said to be a “helper” of Paul and other Christians (vv. 1–2), while Junia is called an “apostle” (or “commissioned missionary,” v. 7). These greetings, in other words, reveal a church in which women engaged in significant ministries.

Some modern interpreters have made far too much of this evidence. They claim, for instance, that Phoebe was the “leader” of the church in Cenchrea, that Junia was an apostle of equal authority to Paul and Peter, and that laboring “in the Lord” means serving as pastors and elders. These claims are not well-based in the text. The “help” Phoebe gave the church probably took the form of “sponsorship”: giving aid to Christian missionaries. Junia is, to be sure, called an apostolos, but the word here almost certainly means “missionary,” not “apostle.” And we simply have no way of knowing what kind of ministries laboring “in the Lord” involved. I doubt that preaching, teaching, or serving as elders is intended—simply because the New Testament elsewhere prohibits such ministries to women (see especially 1 Tim. 2:11–15).

But if some interpreters have tried to give too much significance to these references to the ministry of women in Romans 16, we are often guilty of not giving them enough significance. Women may not have been teaching or preaching, but they clearly were engaging in ministries that were significant and valuable. In our own debate about “women in ministry,” we must be very careful not to give the impression that women may not be called to ministries that are of immense importance for the church.