Romans 1:1-17 & 16:25-27

Introduction to Romans

When we think of Paul's epistle to the Romans we undoubtedly think:  doctrine.  And Romans is thoroughly doctrinal.  One 17th cen. Puritan called Romans, "the quintessence and perfection of saving doctrine" (see Moo, NICNT, 1).  But Romans, while the closest to it, is not a systematic theological treatise.  Romans is first and foremost a letter, written by a particular person, to a particular people, in a particular time and place.  As we set off on this glorious journey of what Luther called "the purest gospel," in order to better understand what God is saying to us today -- to better understand what Romans is about -- we need to better understand the specific circumstances, themes and purpose of Paul's letter.   

The letter begins by identifying the apostle Paul as the author of the letter (1:1).  He tells us in 16:22 that he wrote it using an amanuensis, or secretary, named Tertius.  It is written toward the end of his 3rd missionary journey (around A.D. 57) as he prepared to return to Jerusalem (Acts 20:3-6) during his last three months in Greece, probably in the city of Corinth (2 Cor. 13:1, 10).   

Paul writes to the Roman people at a very important transitional period in his church planting endeavors.  For about 25 years Paul has planted churches all throughout the eastern Mediterranean seaboard.  In 15:19 Paul says that he has already planted churches from Jerusalem to Illyricum (i-lir-i-kum) -- modern day Albania, former Yugoslavia.  He planted churches in many major metropolitan centers throughout southern and western Asia Minor (Tarsus, Pisidian, Antioch, Lystra, Iconium, Derbe, and Ephesus) and Macedonia (Philippi, Thessalonica) and Greece (Corinth).  These new church plants are now stable enough to be able to reach out with the gospel in each of their own local communities and now Paul sets out into virgin territories as far as the western end of the Mediterranean. 

In 15:22-29, Paul tells us that he intends to now travel to 3 places:  Jerusalem, Rome, and Spain. 

First, he is immediately leaving for Jerusalem to deliver the monetary gift he has collected from the primarily Gentile congregations (15:25-28) that he has planted.  The purpose of the gift is more than to provide for the material needs of the suffering church in Jerusalem.  Hopefully it will serve as a practical, concrete way of binding the Jewish and Gentile churches together as the one people of God.

From Jerusalem, Paul intends to set out for Spain in order "to preach the gospel in regions where Christ has not yet been named" (15:20, 24, 28).  On the way is Rome and Paul would like to stop in at Rome on his way to Spain to finally get a chance to meet the Roman Christians (15:22-24, 28-29; cf. 1:10-15).  Paul asks the Romans to pray for him that he will not be unduly delayed in Jerusalem and will be able to come to them (15:30-33) and that they might assist him with missionary support when he comes through Rome on his way to Spain (15:24).  

Paul's epistle has a very important purpose in meeting a real, tangible need among the Roman Christians.  Paul had never visited the Roman Christians and did not have a hand in planting the churches there.  The best evidence we have of the origin of the church in Rome is that when the Roman Jews had been in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit was mightily poured out upon the believers and they had embraced Jesus as their Messiah, they returned home to Rome and planted churches there (Acts 2:10).

So the churches in Rome were founded by Jewish believers and for at least two decades they had dominated the leadership and body of the churches.

But suddenly and dramatically in A.D. 49, the Roman emperor, Claudius, expelled all the Jews from Rome (cf. Acts 18:2).  Overnight, the church became Gentile, who of course would have filled the vacancies of leadership in the churches as well.

Around the time that Paul is writing his letter to the Romans, around A.D. 57, the Roman authorities had begun to let Jews back into the city.  Now imagine what it must have been like for the Jewish believers to return to these now predominantly Gentile congregations, with Gentile culture and flavor, having stripped the churches of all the lasting remnants of Judaism, such as the food laws and holy days. These Jewish believers, now keenly aware of their minority status would now more strongly insist on the full adherence of their Jewish customs in the churches.  We see Paul very specifically addressing this cultural issue in chaps. 14-15, ending with Paul's succinct exhortation, "accept one another just as Christ accepted you" (15:7).

This is THE concrete issue of tension among the Jew and Gentile believers in Rome that Paul is addressing throughout his letter.  THE question of the first century church was:  How can the Gentiles be incorporated into God's people without disenfranchising God's original people, the Jews?  This is the great question that confronted the Jewish apostle Paul in the first century as he sought to explain and defend the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the son of King David.

Generations of Jews, reading the Old Testament promises of God about the Messiah and the salvation he would bring, naturally thought that those promises would bring great blessings for the Jewish people.  But by the time Paul writes Romans something strange and unexpected has happened.  Comparatively few Jews have responded to the gospel and only a small percentage make up the churches, especially in these new Gentile regions, while the Gentiles have turned to Christ in significant numbers.  The church is taking on an overwhelming Gentile identity.

But if the preaching of the gospel is bringing salvation to the Gentiles while leaving most Jews hardened in their sins, how can the gospel truly be the gospel of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek?

Isn't the God who sent the Messiah Jesus to the cross and raised him from the dead to bring about the fulfillment of the promises, the same God who promised to bless His people, Israel?

This was the struggle of the first century, which Paul wonderfully addresses in chaps. 9-11 of the letter to the Romans.

You must remember the shock that has already come upon the Jewish people in a very powerful way in Jesus' coming.  They had expected the Messiah to come in political power and restore the nation of Israel to her former glory.  Instead Jesus was taken in violence by the Romans and cruelly, under the curse of God, nailed to a cross like a common criminal.  This idea of a crucified Messiah was a difficult pill for the Jews to swallow, what Paul has called the "stumbling block of the Jews," or the "scandal of the cross" (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 5:11).

Now to add salt to the wound or the offense of the cross, the churches are being filled primarily with Gentiles. 

But hadn't God promised salvation to Israel -- to the Jews?  How could a church now composed mainly of Gentiles truly be a fulfillment of those promises?

And, more practically, how do we now admit Gentiles into the people of God for whom Jesus came?  Should they be required to come in the same way the Jews did by first submitting to circumcision and then observe the Law of Moses?  And what are the Jews to now do with the Law of Moses?

The Jews had a natural tendency to put all stress on following the Law of Moses while God's grace and election tended to recede into the background.  And since salvation in the Jewish viewpoint was not finally granted until the end of life, obedience to God's law became, in essence, the requirement for salvation.  Only Jews who maintained and preserved their covenant privileges by conforming their lives to the demands of the Law would finally be saved.  And it is this demand that was being placed upon the Gentiles as the means of their entering fully into the community of God's people and finally at the end of the world, being saved.

So you can imagine the tension that is now building in the predominantly Gentile churches around Rome.  What would Sunday worship be like with the high emotions of anger, bitterness, and resentment filling the air?  How would they come together around the table of the Lord and break bread?  Would the observation of the law be a constant source of conversation among the Jewish believers who looked down upon their Gentile brothers and sisters as not being truly mature and committed to God?  How would the Gentile believers express their freedom from the Law of Moses to their Jewish brothers and sisters?  Would they do so in humility or would they flaunt it before them, always trying to offend their Jewish customs and sensitivities?     

Therefore, what is Paul now going to pastorally say to them that will help bring unity to these struggling, divisive churches in Rome?  The observance of the Jewish Law is the source of division and tension among them.  What will Paul offer them to break down this barrier and bring these two formerly separated peoples into the one new people of God?

The answer is the gospel (1:16-17).  The gospel is God's means of restoring all of creation to God's holy order and presence, from the individual soul, to all peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations, including both Jews and Gentiles.

Therefore, the theme and purpose of Romans is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And Paul is now going to apply it to a very real problem and source of tension in the first century church:  the healing of the rift or chasm of the Jewish and Gentile peoples. 

In the gospel, Paul explains how God's new definitive work in Jesus Christ can integrate both Jews and Gentiles into one new people.  The theme of the gospel, like a thread, runs through fabric of the letter from its introduction (1:1, 2, 9, 15) to the conclusion of the letter (15:16, 19). 

The gospel is first and foremost directed to our own sinful, fallen hearts as the power of God to bring each one of us into an intimate and eternal relationship with God.  But as the gospel humbles each one of us at the cross we begin to see the whole world around us very differently, especially how we relate to one another who are in Christ.

The old prejudices and barriers that were formed in the world, or rather that accumulated on us like dirt or bacteria, are now broken down and washed away in the cleansing power of the gospel and we begin to be restored to one another in unity and love for one another. 

In the first century, this meant that all the old prejudices and racial barriers between the Jews and Gentiles could now be torn down and removed by the power of the gospel and restore each one into the unity that God is now bringing to His people.  In the 21st century we can also see that the old prejudices and barriers, whether between male and female, rich or poor, young and old, the tensions between the different races and cultures among people can all be removed and only through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is the unique gift given by God to man to first restore our relationship to God and then to restore each of us to one another.

There is "no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) as God is bringing every human being under the footstool and dominion of Christ until "every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:10-11).  Some will be made to do so willingly now by the Spirit's regenerating power and through faith alone, while all will be made eventually through the stretching forth of Christ's scepter when He rules from heaven's throne with the rod of His glorious power.

This powerful, gospel restoration of the whole world is beautifully set forth in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, first in 1:9-10 and then in 2:11-22.  Here Paul reveals God's all encompassing plan for everything He has made:  the summing up or restoration of all things in heaven and on earth under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  In the beginning of this world, God took the earth which was formless and void and brought order, structure, and form to it.  He then filled it full of His glory reflected in His creation of all things.  And once that glorious creation became polluted with man's sin and rebellion, God immediately began the process of restoring it.  Paradise Lost would become Paradise Restored, but not simply restored to its former glory but to the ultimate glory that God had intended from the beginning. 

In bringing this fallen, corrupted creation into the newly restored, glorified new creation, God is placing every inch of creation, every created thing, every man and woman, every atom and molecule under the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:19b-23).  And just one aspect of this cosmic restoration process is the bringing together in unity that old racial tension, barrier between Jew and Gentile.  This is just one snapshot of the larger reordering of creation.  Paul addresses this in Eph. 2:11-22.  The barrier between the two was the Law of Moses, the observance of Torah, which left the Gentile people, who did not have the Law, excluded from the people of God.

At the cross, Jesus tore down this barrier of the Law, having nailed it to the cross, which necessarily removed the source of tension so that the two, Jew and Gentile, could now be brought together in peace into the one people of God (2:13-15). 

But notice the vertical dimension of Christ's work on the cross as well.  In vv. 16-18 we see that the same work of Christ on the cross brought peace between us as sinners and God our Father. 

It is the one gospel of Jesus Christ that brings peace to broken relationships, both vertically and horizontally.  And this is the theme that Paul wonderfully addresses in his letter to the churches in Rome. 

It is the gospel; the good news about the person and work of Jesus Christ that Paul says in 1:1 that he has been set apart by God to proclaim to the whole earth and specifically to all the Gentile people who are called by Jesus Christ (1:5-6).  It is this work that Paul now turns to in sitting down and addressing the churches in Italy (READ 1:8-17).

Amen!

-SDG-