Commentary Paper - Admission/Application Essay Example

they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness. 20. You did not so learn Christ! --  The two passages are contradictory. Part of the explanation for this may be that they are by two different authors, writing for different audiences, in very different social circumstances. While this is hardly the place to demonstrate the arguments that suggest Ephesians is deutero-Pauline and considerably later in time than Romans, the difference in tone between the two passages is immediately apparent.

The author of Romans concentrates on the formation of his followers while the author of Ephesians attempts to make his audience fell superior by attacking everyone outside his community. The two different aims of the authors, or at any rate their two different methods, could not be more different form the point of view of both psychology and pedagogy. One is likely to result in real inner transformation, and the other in exaggerated senses of pride, group identity, and superiority that might erect a façade behind which spiritual growth would be either imperceptible or irrelevant.

The passage from Romans emphasizes several very effective means of achieving spiritual maturity. It emphasizes that the proper worship of God is spiritual. This means that it relates to an inner transformation, not a display of ritual or any other outward show. The nature of this transformation is described as sacrifice. This is a metaphor for the process that the soul must undergo. The traditional manner of sacrifice in Judaism as in other cultures of the Near East and Roman Empire was the ritual slaughtering of an animal and the burning of all or part of its flesh on an altar so that no human being would benefit from the very real economic value of sacrifice in a world constantly on the verge of starvation, but only the divinity to whom it