Beloved of God and Called to be Saints
Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Crumbs From Our Master’s Table
Introduction to the Crumbs From Our Master’s Table series
With the invention of the smartphone and the emergence of social media, the “selfie” has become a social phenomenon. You’ve likely snapped a few of your own. And if you’re a pro, you probably even have a “selfie” stick. What are we to make of this “selfie” phenomenon, anyway? According to Dr. Mariann Hardey, a lecturer in marketing at Durham University, it’s all about the obsession we have with “presenting [ourselves] in the best way…”1
This shouldn’t surprise us. Presenting ourselves in the best possible light is innate to the human condition. It’s one of the reasons we tend to lie. It’s also why Botox, face lifts, and breast augmentations are ubiquitous in modern society. It is why photographers touch-up wedding photos and school pictures in Photoshop. And, it’s why we take that one last look in the mirror before opening the door for our guests.
We give a lot of attention to how we present ourselves to the world around us, often with very little thought to the fact that it is such a natural part of our social behavior. In many cases such preparation is normal and expected. Of course we are expected to prepare for the big job interview and practice or memorize our scripts before speaking in front of an audience. It is appropriate to dress up nice to go on a date. It’s responsible to put our best foot forward when we present a business plan to a group of investors. These are just a few examples where it serves the greater good to present our best selves.
However, there are other occasions where it would be considered inappropriate and vain to present ourselves in the best way, if by “best way” we mean our most aesthetically pleasing self. For example, it would be appalling to see emergency personnel checking their hair in the mirror before performing CPR when someone’s life is hanging in the balance. It would be vain for someone to wear designer clothes to a job that required coveralls or protective gear. It would be dangerous for a soldier to be concerned with the polish on his boots in the middle of combat with bullets flying over his head. In these latter cases, presenting ourselves in the best way would mean presenting our best gifts and abilities to the situation at hand and not worrying how well we aligned ourselves to popular social aesthetic conventions.
More importantly, there is a condition in which “presenting ourselves in the best way” would be eternally damning. God knows the true and particular condition of each and every person’s soul, and yet there are those who would attempt to present themselves to God in the best way possible. The author of the Proverbs reminds us “Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: But a faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs 20:6). It is common to present ourselves as good, faithful, steadfast, and loving, but like so many social media profiles, people are usually a lot better in presentation than they are in person. It seems natural for us to minimize our vices and exalt our virtues, but that’s the problem. A natural man looks in the spiritual mirror, sees his flaws, and hurries past them, quickly forgetting what he really looks like (James 1:23-24).
Sometimes, however, someone comes along who surprises us. When a particular Canaanite woman came out to meet Jesus as he made his way through the district of Tyre and Sidon, the idea of “presenting herself in the best way” completely escaped her. Had she been living in modernity, one might imagine her with a smartphone trying to get a selfie with Jesus so she could post it on her feed. No doubt, uploading a picture with Jesus would have earned her a lot of “likes.” Who knows, her selfie may have gone viral and A&E would have hooked her up with her own reality TV show. (They might call it, Jesus Feeds the Dogs.) Instead, this Gentile woman took an approach that was different than the “natural man.” She debased herself in the most humiliating way: she agreed with Jesus and identified as a dog. Matthew records the account in his gospel:
And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matthew 15:21–28, ESV)
Typically, the dogs in Jesus’ day weren’t the cute house-hold companions we think of today, pets with vaccinations, grooming, and special toys and treats. Dogs were, more often than not, mangy scavengers fit for the garbage dumps and destined to die in the streets. That’s why the Jews used the term dog as a pejorative idiom to describe the Gentiles who were the pagan enemies of God. Like the four-legged scavengers of the streets and dumps, the Gentiles were appallingly unclean (Ezra 9:1-3). Jesus framed his response to the Canaanite woman by creating a word picture of a common Hebrew family eating at the dinner table and enjoying the blessings of God. These were the Israelites. Then he explained that it would be inappropriate to give the children’s food to the dogs, the scavengers who were possibly laying under the table or by the front door. These were the Canaanite woman and her daughter. Jesus’s insinuation is as offensive as the image is appalling.
In the 1937 Disney classic, Snow White, the evil Queen looks into a magic mirror and
asks, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” In her narcissism and vanity, she seeks the affirmation of the magic mirror to tell her what she desires to hear—that she is the fairest in the land. Her value and self-worth depend on a good report from the magic mirror. But when she learns Snow White is the fairest in the land, she makes three brash attempts to kill her. The Queen’s value and identity is completely wrapped up in a favorable report of her self, and her obsession with this “best” view of herself drives the plot of the fairy tale. But what are faerie stories for anyway?
According to J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, fairy tales are effective in helping us regain “a clear view” of real life. Tales like Snow White take us out of the familiar and place us in a realm where we are arrested by the unfamiliar, a place where we see reality more clearly. In this story, the mirror reveals the Queen is evil because the question is at the root of her heart. Not the other way around. Asking the question doesn’t turn her into an evil witch; asking the question reveals that she is an evil witch already. Both her question and her response to the answer reveal this about her heart. She doesn’t ask who is the fairest in the land to give honor where honor is due. She asks to make sure she still maintains the status of “fairest of all.” Otherwise, she would not have been horrified by the answer when she learned Snow White had taken her place.
This same experience is true of us. What we see when we look in the mirror of truth and reality reveals the true condition of our hearts. And how we respond to what we see only serves to affirm what has already been revealed. According to Jesus, the one who sees herself as deserving and entitled to a fair status is blind still. He told the religious right of his day, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:41, ESV).
Unlike Snow White’s evil queen, the Canaanite woman in Matthew’s gospel was not blind; she could see clearly. She could see that she did not belong at the table of the Master. She could see that, spiritually speaking, she was indeed a dog. Spiritually speaking, she was no more than a mangy scavenger whose destiny was to scrounge the garbage dumps until she finally died in the miserable streets of this damned world. Seeing her situation was desperate, she laid aside any vanity she might hope to muster, and begged for scraps, even a crumb of mercy:
“Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a
demon.”
It would have been bad enough to have been oppressed herself, but her own oppression came vicariously through watching her daughter suffer severely. She would have readily traded places with her, but reality would not allow it. Her child was in the throes of evil, and she was helpless to change the matter. So she humbly accepted her reality, and pleaded for mercy. It was not simply the kind of desperation that stirred a mother to go out of her way or suffer some minor inconvenience to cure the situation. It was the kind of desperation that moved a Canaanite, a Syrophoenician to be exact, to kneel before a Jew and ask for his help. It was the kind of desperation that moved an enemy of God to cry out to Him for mercy.
Mercy is not what the blind ask for. The blind, when they suffer hardship or evil, demand justice, or at least what they believe they deserve. The blind become distraught—and enraged—when they cannot see the reality they envision should be theirs. The blind blame the darlings for their pain and trick them into eating poisoned apples, and send hunters to pierce the heart of the “fairest in the land.” Filled with bitterness, the blind spend eternity gnashing their teeth and summoning the powers of hell to give them their way. But they will never get it. And they will never, ever, see reality. They will only go on in their blindness, blindly pretending, blindly believing they are getting closer to justice, but wandering deeper and deeper in the blackness of their dark blindness. It’s the helpless and undeserving, the dogs, who see; and because they see, they cry desperately for the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table.
“Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you
desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.” (Matthew 15:28, ESV)
In a humorous magazine article, a pet-owning couple rushed home from work to prepare for guests they had invited to dinner, only to discover their dog had been sick and left his stomach contents—along with its putrid odor—throughout the entire house. The article recounted the rollicking antics of the couple’s unfortunate discoveries and hilarious attempts to rectify their situation. Eventually, they determined one of them had left packages of thawing steaks, intended for their guests, low enough for the dog to get a hold of them. The moral of the story was captured in the title of the article: “Raise the Steaks!”
One of the great things about the gospel is its accessibility. Jesus didn’t “raise the steaks” as it were. He put the gospel down on the bottom shelf where everyone—including the dogs—could get to it (Galatians 3:28–29, ESV). The Canaanite woman’s desperate situation opened her eyes to the severity and hopelessness of her spiritual condition. When she humbled herself and acknowledged that Jesus’s assessment of her condition was true, the gospel, having always been well within reach, was now visible to her once blind eyes.
Notably, during this period of history, the Gentiles of the Tyre region were constantly robbing the poor Jews of earthly bread. By acknowledging Jesus as Lord, i.e., Son of David (vs. 22), the Jews as the children of the Lord (cf. Mark 7:27-28), and herself as a dog, the Canaanite woman was doing more than acknowledging her humble station as a sinner alien to the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:12). She was also making a spiritual observation about this ongoing conflict between the Jews and the Canaanites of the region. In a word, she was acknowledging the priority of Israel in God’s plan to provide spiritual bread to the Gentiles through the Jews; and in an expression of faith, she thought it not stealing to eat the crumbs that fell from the Master’s table. Again, Matthew’s gospel records the event:
Jesus said to her, “O woman, great is your faith!” By resisting her initial request, but without heeding his disciples’ plea to send her away, Jesus tried her faith, revealing a mere crumb of the great wisdom of God.
“Be it done for you as you desire,” Jesus said. By answering her petition, he gave her a mere crumb of mercy, a foretaste of the healing all his elect would experience when the fullness of his kingdom is realized (Revelation 21:4).
Scripture further tells us, “And her daughter was healed instantly.” By healing the woman’s daughter, Jesus revealed a mere crumb of the power of God. Not many days later, He would unleash the full power of the Godhead by dying on a cross and then raising to life again (Romans 1:16 cf. 2 Corinthians 13:4).
This same wisdom, mercy, and power of God is available to every dog who desires the crumbs that fall from our Master’s table (John 6:37).
When I was a kid, my mom would make over-sized, sweet rolls, thick with rich cinnamon-sugar and plump raisins smeared between every layer. The outer layers were sweet and flaky, slightly crunchy. They were perfect for dipping in milk or coffee. But my brother’s and I loved the center of the cinnamon roll, where all the sweet, buttery goodness was absorbed into the dough and kept the pastry soft and gooey. If there wasn’t milk to dip the crunchy outer layers in, we might pass these “crumbs” to the dog so we could focus on the rich gooey center. One might say we were cinnamon roll snobs. Crumbs are mere morsels, beggar’s food. They are not what the deserving eat; they are niblets for the desperate and humble. Snobs abhor crumbs. They do not suffer paupers’ vittles. Their palates crave rich, moist cuisine. They won’t tolerate the crumbs. But those who are truly hungry, beggars, happily find satisfaction in the crumbs that Jesus drops for us.
When the Canaanite woman said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” she wasn’t asking for the center of the cinnamon roll as it were. She was content with the discarded crusty edges because they were more than she deserved, more than enough to meet her needs, and more delicious and satisfying than any of the delicacies the world had to offer. The world’s meat left her spiritually desperate, but mere crumbs changed her life, because they were crumbs from the Master’s table.
Typically, crumbs will not sustain a person long term. To grow strong and live healthy, one must have milk and meat and bread and wine. But crumbs can offer sustenance for the in-between times. Even though crumbs are often just scraps, leftovers from the children’s plates or food prep in the kitchen, there is nourishment in every morsel when they come from the Master’s table. In fact, crumbs are not a substitute for the weekly meal of Word and Sacraments dished generously from the Lord’s table on the Sabbath, but they are good for daily food; and they’re great with a cup of coffee in the morning.
The Crumbs From Our Master’s Table series is a daily morsel of theological soul food—not a sermon mind you—just a crumb of nourishment from Scripture, usually one or two verses at a time. These crumbs were originally emailed each morning to subscribers at BOOKS AND LETTERS (scottpostma.net). They are collected here in a single volume to be read devotionally or as a simple commentary on a book of the Bible.
Introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans
This volume treats Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, written around AD 57. Letters such as this are called occasional letters, epistles written to a particular communion of Christians for a particular occasion. This means Paul’s letters are not theological treatises or systematic theologies, per se; rather, they are letters written to address immediate and specific concerns. Because these letters are not written to us directly, they function as literature in the most fundamental sense of the word. Of course, they are, without a doubt, divinely inspired literature; so even though they are not written to us, we must read them as having been written and preserved for us. Thus, the instructions, exhortations, corrections, and encouragements must be applied to our own lives in principle. In other words, to read them properly, we must consider the occasion under which Paul wrote a specific letter to understand how he intended the letter to be understood by the original audience; only then can we lift those theological principles from the context of Paul’s writing and apply them to our own situation. I have attempted to do that in my own comments.
The occasion for this specific letter is Paul’s desire for those in first-century Rome who are “beloved of God and called to be saints” to support his missionary work to Spain. Because he is interested in laying out before them his vision for Christian ministry so they can be assured he is worthy of their support, his letter is subsequently packed with theology. As a matter of fact, Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome is his longest and most sustained theological explanation of the gospel. Thus, we can say the theme of this letter is the gospel’s power to save the unrighteous and establish a flourishing humanity in the new age of Spirit-led liberty, a humanity that is united in and by Jesus Christ for the glory of God the Father.
In my comments on Paul’s letter, I have not sought to be original; neither have I sought to appease any particular theological tradition, denomination, or ideology. I write as a Christian humanist, one who, with Irenaeus, believes the glory of God is a living man, and with Erasmus, that Christ is more interested in personal piety than our straining pedantically over the finer points of dogma, and with J. I. Packer and Jens Zimmerman, that Christianity is the ultimate humanism since it is deeply concerned with texts, human flourishing, and society’s common good.
My approach is to simply exposit the text as plainly as possible, verse by verse as much as Paul’s intended thought allows. On occasion, I draw on insights from other commentaries or expound on the original language, especially where I believe others’ words express the meaning best, and where a treatment of the original language provides some weighty or significant insight. Taking a cue from C. S. Lewis, who noted the best devotional reading was chewing on some rich theology, this work can serve as both commentary and devotional. Yet, as I mentioned in the series introduction, these readings are mere crumbs, crumbs from our Master’s table, to be sure; but they are just theological morsels meant to foster your appetite for the whole meal of Scripture; they are no substitute for Word and Sacrament.
Notwithstanding, it is my prayer that daily ruminating on Paul’s thoughts about the gospel will help you better follow the One to whom our Apostle and man of letters, in his great liberty, found himself endearingly enslaved.
Scott Postma
Advent 2025
Professor Mariann Hardey (https://www.durham.ac.uk/business/our-people/mariann-hardey/) quoted in The Guardian https://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-26-how-selfies-became-a-global-phenomenon/