Most Christians open Paul’s letters and read them like a personal note. Dear You. Here’s how to live. Here’s how to get saved. Walk the Romans Road, pray the prayer, done.
But what if that entire approach misses the point?
Dr. Beverly Gaventa has spent over 40 years studying the Apostle Paul. She taught at Princeton Theological Seminary for more than two decades. She served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature, the largest professional organization of biblical scholars in the world. In 2020, the British Academy awarded her the Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies, an honor rarely given to American scholars. Her brand new commentary on Romans is already being called a landmark contribution to New Testament scholarship.
And after all of that, she says most of us are reading Paul wrong.
We’re Listening to Someone Else’s Conversation
One of the first things Dr. Gaventa points out in our conversation is that Paul’s letters were written to groups, not individuals. These were actual letters sent to actual communities dealing with actual problems in the first century.
As she puts it: “We’re listening in on somebody else’s telephone conversation. We’re reading somebody else’s email.”
That doesn’t mean the letters have nothing to say to us. They absolutely do. But when we skip over the original context and jump straight to personal application, we shrink the message down to something Paul never intended.
The Gospel Is Bigger Than You Think
Here’s where things get interesting.
Dr. Gaventa is known for reading Paul “apocalyptically.” And before you think rapture, Left Behind, and end times charts, she wants you to know that’s not what apocalyptic means.
The word in Greek simply means a revelation, an uncovering. And for Paul, the gospel is the revelation of something massive: God has intruded into a world gone wrong. Not just to help individuals understand their lives better, but to rescue an entire cosmos held captive by powers that are bigger than any of us.
Paul talks about Sin with a capital S. He talks about Death as a force. He talks about principalities and powers. These aren’t just metaphors. For Paul, these are real pressures that shape human behavior in ways we often don’t recognize. Dr. Gaventa compares it to a child soldier who gets caught up in a web of violence he never chose. You can’t just say “stop” and expect everything to be fine. Liberation takes more than willpower. It takes divine intervention.
And that’s what Paul says God has done in Jesus.
Salvation for Individuals, People Groups, and All of Creation
One of the most eye-opening moments in our conversation came when Dr. Gaventa walked through the layers of salvation in Romans.
Yes, Paul cares about individuals. But by the time you get to Romans 1:16, he’s talking about God’s power to save Jew and Gentile alike. That’s whole people groups. And by the time you hit Romans 8, Paul is talking about creation itself groaning, waiting to be redeemed.
So salvation in Romans isn’t just about you getting right with God. It’s about God reclaiming everything. Individuals. Communities. Ethnic groups. The entire created order. All of it.
That’s a gospel worth paying attention to.
Phoebe: The First Interpreter of Romans
Dr. Gaventa makes a compelling case that Phoebe, the woman Paul commends at the end of Romans, was actually the first interpreter of the letter.
Think about it. Paul trusted her to carry his most theologically dense letter to Rome. She’s identified as a deacon of the church at Cenchreae. Paul asks the Roman believers to help her with whatever she needs.
But here’s the part most people miss: someone had to read the letter out loud to these small gatherings of believers scattered across Rome. And if Phoebe was the one reading it, she was already interpreting it. The words she emphasized. The pauses she took. The questions she answered afterward.
The first voice the Roman church heard delivering Paul’s letter may very well have been a woman’s.
The Revelation About Worship
After 40 years of studying Romans, Dr. Gaventa said something in our conversation that stopped me in my tracks. She shared a discovery she hadn’t expected to find.
The entire letter is saturated with worship.
The human problem in Romans 1? Refusing to worship God. The long string of psalm quotes in Romans 3? People refusing to honor God. The climax of Romans 8? Believers crying out “Abba, Father.” The ending of Romans 15? Jew and Gentile coming together to glorify God.
Paul even punctuates his arguments with doxologies and the word “amen,” which is liturgical worship language straight out of Israel’s tradition.
Dr. Gaventa realized that worship isn’t just one theme among many in Romans. It’s the integrating thread that holds the whole letter together.
One Truth to Transform How You Read the New Testament
At the end of our conversation, I asked Dr. Gaventa for one piece of advice that could change how people engage with Scripture.
Her answer was simple: always look for what God is doing.
We tend to read the Bible looking for what we’re supposed to do. What we’re supposed to believe. How we’re supposed to behave. And that’s fine. But that’s not where the story starts.
For Paul, everything begins with God’s action. What has God done in Jesus? What is God doing through the Spirit? What will God do to bring all things to completion?
If we don’t get that order straight, we’ll never get the response straight either.
Watch the Full Conversation
This blog only scratches the surface. Dr. Gaventa covers so much more in our full conversation: the real meaning of Romans 9-11 and God’s faithfulness to Israel, why she stepped away from the word “invasion” and now uses “intrusion,” the surprising maternal imagery Paul uses to describe his ministry, and what it means that the New Testament writers weren’t all saying the same thing.
If you’re ready to see Paul’s letters with fresh eyes, hit play on the full episode above.
This one will rearrange the way you read your Bible.
📚 Check out Dr. Gaventa’s work:
Romans: A Commentary (New Testament Library, 2024) – https://a.co/d/fO8KIcN
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