Introduction to The Book of Romans

And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus... He continued there by the space of two years; so that all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks... After these things were ended, Paul purposed in his spirit... to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome... And after the uproar at Ephesus was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed to go into Macedonia... And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus. These going before tarried for us at Troas.

How a letter to a church Paul had never visited became one of Scripture's most powerful and history-shaping books.

The Greatest Book in Scripture

The Book of Romans has been called by some "the greatest book in all the Scripture." If it is not that, then it may very well be the greatest work of the New Testament. While I am not sure I completely hold to that assessment, I do know that the Epistle to the Roman Church is a very important and powerful letter.

When you survey the last 2,000 years of Christian history, it seems that the Book of Romans has been used by God on a number of occasions to bring about new birth, revival, and great awakenings. This teaching given by the Apostle Paul is, for lack of a better word, epic. It is one of the most powerful discourses ever given.

A Letter to a Church Paul Had Never Visited

The book is intriguing for many reasons, one of which is that it was written to a group of people whom, although the Apostle had never visited, he seemed well acquainted with. Unlike most of the churches Paul wrote to, the Roman church was not planted by him. Rome was certainly the most well-known city of the day, but at the time this letter was written, its author had not had the privilege of walking its famous streets.

The capital of the empire was feared by just about every nation, both in and out of the empire. It was a city of grandeur and mystique, and in the midst of this sprawling metropolis was a seed of the gospel and a growing church. Over the years there has been much discussion among Bible teachers as to how a seemingly well-known church came to be there.

Some speculate that the first seeds of the gospel were planted by the first Jewish converts who came to faith at the birth of the church on Pentecost in Acts 2. Perhaps Jews from the regions around Rome were present at Pentecost and carried the good news home in their hearts. It could be that wealthy Jewish business men and women came to faith in their travels and saw a church birthed by their faith. Anything is possible. But as I have journeyed through the New Testament, following the path of the gospel through Acts and the early Christian epistles, I think there may be another, more intentional reason a thriving and well-known church existed there.

The Advantage of a Chronological Journey

For nearly half a decade I had the privilege of leading my church, Cross Connection, through the Book of Acts in a unique way. My goal was to follow the historical timeline of the early church with Acts as our roadmap, detouring through each New Testament epistle chronologically where it would fall in the narrative. The advantage of studying the New Testament this way cannot be overstated. As you do so, you begin to see important connections that are not clear when you jump from book to book or study them in the disjointed order they appear in the Bible—the epistles, for instance, are arranged longest to shortest.

Viewing the New Testament through the lens of the chronology given in Acts is revolutionary to one's understanding of the early church. Walking this path—albeit challenging and long—brought some within our fellowship to say things like, "I feel as though I know the Apostle Paul now," and "I had no idea these things were actual events until we looked at them this way."

When you look at the New Testament in the context of history—and Acts is a history book of the early church—things become much clearer. You begin to see where Paul was when he wrote Galatians, and why; where he was when writing 1 and 2 Corinthians, and what was happening in his life and the life of the church at that time.

We have been going through Acts since November of 2008. When we reached chapter 15, we detoured through James, then Galatians, then 1 and 2 Thessalonians, then 1 and 2 Corinthians, and now we come to Romans, looking at it in the context of where and when it was written. Studying the Scriptures this way has convinced me there is an explanation for how the church at Rome came to be.

The Questions Romans Raises

When I come to an epic book like Romans—sixteen chapters filled with heavy doctrine—I begin to ask questions before I ever get into passages like the Romans Road, or consider justification by faith, sanctification, predestination, or election. Many of these doctrinal themes have their foundation in this book, but before getting into any of that, I ask:

How did an influential and well-known church come to be established in this great city at that time? In Romans 1, Paul says, "Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world." The church in Rome had a good reputation in a very evil city—a city filled with every kind of vice we can imagine, and probably some we can't. That church even had people in the house of the emperor serving the body of Christ. How did such a church come to be?

Secondly, why did Paul write one of the most powerful books of Scripture to a church he apparently had little interaction with? What was the purpose of sending this letter ahead? We saw in Acts 19 that it was Paul's purpose in his heart, "I must see Rome." Many of us have a "bucket list" place we say we must see. For Paul, it was Rome.

Paul was a Roman citizen, born in Tarsus and raised in Jerusalem, but his desire to see Rome was not about the sights or the existential epicureanism of the city. The reason, as he tells us in chapter 1, was, "I want to preach the gospel in Rome." Paul considered it advantageous to declare the gospel of Christ there. He knew his calling—a Jewish Pharisee converted to Christianity, called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, an ambassador of the kingdom of God to people outside his culture, in a place he'd never been.

Rome wasn't even the place he wanted to end. His ultimate goal was Spain. He never got there, because his life ended in a prison in Rome, where he was beheaded under the lunatic emperor Nero. And yet, just as we are in an election season, it's interesting to note that Paul didn't speak against the rulers of his day.

Romans 16: The Key to the Church's Origin

To answer these questions, turn to Romans 16, the last chapter. It may seem odd to start at the end of a book we're beginning, but there are important keys here that answer the setting questions. Chapter 16, Paul's close of the letter, divides into four sections.

Verses 1–16 are Paul's salutation, where he names individuals who make up the church and seem to make up its leadership. Verses 17–20 are his final exhortation. Verses 21–23 are a greeting on behalf of those with him. And verses 24–27 are his final benediction. So: a salutation, an exhortation, a greeting, and a benediction.

This is important because it reveals Paul's connection to the church at Rome. In the salutation he mentions people like Phebe, Priscilla, Aquila, Epaenetus, Mary, Andronicus, Junia, Julia, Apelles, and Aristobulus—twenty-nine people by name, plus the saints and the brethren. Each of these individuals were people he knew personally, co-laborers, disciples under his care. This leads me to believe the church in Rome was planted by people Paul trained to plant churches. He trained a team and sent them out—and he did so just prior to writing this great letter.

Aquila, Priscilla, and the Path to Ephesus

In Acts 19, on his third missionary journey, Paul landed in Ephesus—a city he had tried to enter on his second journey, but the Holy Spirit forbade him from going into Asia. So instead he crossed over into Macedonia, planting churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, then went into Greece. He had little fruit in Athens, but in Corinth he stayed two years planting a church.

There he met two individuals expelled from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla, a husband and wife kicked out in AD 49 when Claudius Caesar ordered all Jews to leave the city. They landed in Corinth right about the time Paul arrived, and they shared his trade as tentmakers. They were Jews who did not yet know Jesus as Messiah, so Paul shared his faith with them, they became believers, and they became his co-laborers. Over the next eighteen months they served side by side with him. Paul even says in Romans 16 that they "risked their lives on my behalf," because people were seeking to kill him.

When Paul left Corinth, Priscilla and Aquila boarded the boat with him from Cenchrea. He couldn't enter Ephesus because he aimed to get to Jerusalem, so he left these two disciples behind there. In Ephesus they met a man in the synagogue named Apollos, preaching like John the Baptist about repentance, but who didn't know about Jesus the Messiah. They pulled him aside and explained the things he didn't know about the gospel. Apollos became a believer and went to Corinth with letters of commendation, having great impact preaching the gospel there.

The School of Tyrannus and the Planting of Asia

While all this happened, Priscilla and Aquila laid the groundwork in Ephesus for Paul's return. On his third journey, after visiting the churches in Galatia, he came down into Asia to Ephesus. He preached in the synagogue for about three weeks, but when he declared that Jesus of Nazareth was Messiah, risen from the dead after the Jewish council killed Him, they drove him out. He didn't go far—he moved next door to a place called the School of Tyrannus, where every day at midday he taught and preached the gospel for about two years.

During that time he discipled and raised up individuals—people with names like those in Romans 16. It is believed that the churches of Asia were planted during this period, not by Paul personally, since he stayed in Ephesus, but as a kind of practicum for those he was training. They went to cities like Smyrna, Philadelphia, Sardis, and Laodicea. Acts 19:10 tells us that all in Asia heard the gospel. How awesome is that? Would to God that everyone in San Diego County would hear the gospel. There are people in our own county who have not truly heard it—they've heard the name of Jesus, they've heard things on TV that sound like gospel but are in fact false, yet they have not heard the true saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sending Out Church Planters to Rome

Paul was in Ephesus from about the fall of 54 until the fall of 57—three years. In AD 54, Claudius Caesar died, and his edict against Jews living in Rome died with him. Slowly, Jewish individuals began returning to the city, and it seems Paul dispatched some of his church planters to go back to Rome as well, to carry the gospel. I believe the church at Rome was planted by this team Paul had raised up for this very purpose.

And it wasn't just Rome. As you read on through Timothy and Titus, you see these men—Timothy, Titus, Andronicus, Trophimus, Tychicus—landing in cities like Miletus, Cyprus, Crete, and Ephesus, scattered everywhere throughout Asia. I believe Paul came to recognize, "If I'm planting churches by myself, there's only so much I can do, and there's coming a day I won't be here." So he invested in everyone he could and sent them out as church planters, just as he was sent. Two thousand years later, we are the better for it.

The Riot at Ephesus

Paul generally knew his time in a place was up when a riot came because of his ministry. In Ephesus there was a great temple to the goddess Diana, housing a meteor they claimed was an image of Diana cast down by Zeus—they worshipped this rock, very similar to what happens in Mecca today. These things are not new.

Clever merchants capitalized on this. The silversmiths and coppersmiths, guilds run by men like Alexander the coppersmith, made little pornographic images of Diana that pilgrims bought as tokens after worshipping immorally at the temple. But as Paul preached and people were converted, they departed from their pagan ways, and the silversmiths' trade was endangered. That would be as if God did such a great work in Escondido that the local pornography store went out of business for lack of customers.

So the silversmiths held a union meeting and decided the problem was Paul. They gathered a crowd in the theater at Ephesus, which held 20,000 people, and chanted for two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." They had seized Paul's disciples and roughed them up, and Paul was ready to go in after them, but the believers held him back, saying, "You can't go in there—they'll kill you."

Writing Romans from Corinth

After the uproar, in Acts 20, Paul decided to leave Asia and go through Macedonia, where Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea were, then down into Greece. During this whole period he wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians; 2 Corinthians was written from Philippi. As he traveled through these churches, he was receiving a financial offering for the impoverished church in Jerusalem.

He spent time in Philippi, then visited Corinth one last time, staying about three months—likely the fall and winter of AD 57 into 58. It was during that stay that Paul wrote the letter we call Romans, addressing it to the people he had sent out to plant the church there. Over the previous three years the Roman church had already gained a reputation; their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world. This is why it was strategic for God, through Paul, to plant a church in Rome: God knew that a strong, thriving church there would send the gospel throughout the entire empire.

The Cultural Divide Between Jew and Gentile

Because Claudius had expelled the Jews, the Roman church was likely made up predominantly of Gentile believers. At this point in Christian history, around AD 57, the church had a cultural divide. There was a Jewish presence, primarily in Jerusalem and Judea, and a Gentile presence that looked quite different.

Let me illustrate. Some of you have believing parents and grandparents and grew up in church—you're "Jewish Christians," in a sense, with a heritage in Christ. You know how to speak the Christian language and fit in. Others came to faith within the last ten years with no believers in your family—you look a little different and may not understand all the "supposed-to-be" things about being a Christian, which isn't a bad thing, because many of those things aren't biblical at all. The Gentile Christian church looked different from the Jewish Christian church, and that cultural divide was causing problems.

One problem stemmed from Paul's letter to the Galatians. Some in Jerusalem were passing it around out of context, claiming Paul taught that you must depart from the Law of Moses. As we saw in Acts 20, a group took a vow to kill him. They were called the Sicarii, or Dagger Men—Jewish assassins who considered it their job to purify the Jewish religion. In crowded places like a marketplace, they would walk up secretly, stab a man to death with daggers hidden under their cloaks, and walk away. Now they had set their sights on Paul, saying he preached against the Law of Moses.

But that's not what Paul was doing. He declared that the Law of Moses points people to Christ; it does not save us but reveals our need for salvation in Christ alone. He would not lay the burden of the Mosaic Law on Gentiles by demanding circumcision and Jewish traditions. As a result, he had real critics seeking to destroy his work in Galatia, in Corinth, everywhere he went. People were saying, "The Gentile church is not the real church—you're not really part of the church unless you become more Jewish."

Meanwhile, the Gentile Christians boasted of their great fellowship, freedom, and liberty in Christ, saying the Hebrew Christians didn't understand it. In some ways they were right, but they carried it to an extreme, creating an either/or situation in the body of Christ. "A house divided against itself will not stand." There is a level of unity in Christ that must exist for the church to survive, and very early on the enemy sought to destroy God's work through division. This is why division is so dangerous and must be dealt with. Paul wrote to bring these two groups together so they would recognize they are one in Christ.

The Theme and Structure of Romans

Keep this in mind as we read the book: one of Paul's purposes was to unite Jews and Gentiles in Christ. From chapter 1 through chapter 16, he makes clear there are not different kinds of Christians—some Jewish, some Gentile, some more spiritual and some with liberty.

In chapter 1 he says he wants to preach the gospel "because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, both Jew and Greek." Then he explains that the religious cannot save themselves by their religion—even hyper-religious Pharisees, as Paul himself once was. The pagans cannot do anything in their temples to save themselves, "because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (chapter 3), and "the wages of sin is death" (chapter 6). Everyone needs the free gift of grace in Christ, who "demonstrated His love towards us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (5:8). There is no hope apart from His saving work. And after being saved, we do not perfect ourselves through our own righteousness (chapters 6, 7, 8); God by His Spirit works a sanctifying work in us, enabling us to obey and to lay down our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to Him, which is our reasonable service.

The book of Romans was written to a new and thriving church as a doctrinal primer—a discipleship manual showing what to believe and how to live. Chapters 12 through 14 contain at least 45 exhortations: honor those in authority, pay your taxes (ouch!), live at peace with all men as much as it depends on you. The first half of the book gives us what to believe; the second half tells us what to do.

Chapters 9, 10, and 11 talk much about the Jews. Why? Because Paul is writing to a Gentile church and saying, "Don't be ignorant of the fact that God still has a plan for the Jewish nation. Don't look down on them for missing Jesus as Messiah." Paul says he would give his very salvation that they would be saved—"I would rather be accursed that my whole people, the nation of Israel, would be saved." Can anyone here today say, "I would give up my eternal salvation to see America saved"? Honestly, I don't know that I could.

The Journey to Jerusalem

In Romans 15, Paul says he's on his way to Jerusalem to carry a gift from the churches of Asia and Greece. We don't know the amount, but it was surely great; Paul said the Philippians gave generously out of their poverty, and the Corinthians outdid the Macedonians. With seven men listed in Acts 20—plus Titus, whom Luke never mentions (some believe Titus was Luke's brother), and Luke himself—Paul had nine traveling companions, aiming to reach Jerusalem for Pentecost.

At every stop—Ephesus, Miletus, Troas, throughout Syria and Tyre, into Caesarea—the church warned him, "Don't go to Jerusalem; bad things await you there." In Caesarea a prophet knelt before Paul, took his sash, bound his own hands and feet, and said, "Whoever owns this sash, this is what will happen to him at Jerusalem." Everyone said, "Paul, you can't go." He began to wonder, sought the Lord that night, and the Lord said, "You will preach the gospel at Rome." Paul didn't know exactly how it would come to pass; God had a plan that probably wasn't entirely in line with his own. Ever experience that?

So Paul went to Jerusalem, met with James the Lord's brother and the apostles, and gave them the gift. This gift was vital—just as important as the letter to Rome. The Roman letter told Gentile Christians not to despise Jewish Christians; now Paul brought a gift from Gentile Christians to Jewish Christians, a practical demonstration of love that proclaimed, "We are one in Christ." This mattered, because less than thirteen years later those Jewish Christians would be expelled from Jerusalem and scattered throughout the empire—into churches in Berea, Thessalonica, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Miletus, Troas, and Rome—where they joined the Christian ekklesia rather than the synagogue, recognizing their oneness in Christ.

Becoming All Things to All Men

The leaders in Jerusalem said, "We love what God is doing among the Gentiles, but there's a problem. A group of men have taken an oath not to eat until you're dead, because they say you've departed from the Law of Moses. So, culturally, you need to do something." They asked him to shave his head, take a vow, and go into the temple with four men who couldn't afford the vow, paying their expenses as proof he still held to the culture of the nation.

Paul agreed. Why? He's free in Christ; he didn't need to do this. Many would say, "Stand up for your liberty!" But Paul did it because "to the Jews I became a Jew... that I might win the more." To be culturally sensitive, he shaved his head and entered the temple, seeking to set at ease the minds of those who said he preached against Moses.

Here's a heads-up: when we return to Acts, we'll see that plan didn't work out the way they hoped. Paul ended up a captive of the Romans, spent a couple of years in jail in Caesarea, and appealed his case to Caesar as a Roman citizen. That appeal meant he couldn't be released even when the magistrates would have let him go, and so, on Rome's dime, he was shipped to Rome to meet Nero. That comprises Paul's fourth journey, which we'll cover as we finish Acts.

The Big Picture and a History of Revival

Before we get into justification by faith, sanctification, predestination, or election, it's vital to recognize that Paul was writing to a church he was involved in planting by proxy, because he raised up the team that started it. He wrote to give them a declaration of the gospel, a doctrinal primer to teach and disciple new believers, to show them that although they are Gentile believers, there is another segment of believers equal with them in Christ—their Jewish brothers and sisters—and to explain what a Christian must believe and how a Christian must live.

This book is so rich it's easy to get bogged down. I read recently that a well-known Bible teacher spent nine years going through Romans chapters 1–9. He's not alone; volumes have been written by single authors on just the first nine chapters. Much of the Protestant Reformation and Reformed doctrine grew out of Romans. But you can get so technically aware of the minutest detail that you lose the forest for the trees. This was a book written to Gentile believers to help them understand the doctrine of Christ, to diminish the cultural divide in the church, and as advance notice that Paul himself would soon be with them to fill in the details a sixteen-chapter letter couldn't cover.

My encouragement this week is to read these sixteen chapters and familiarize yourself with the passage. It is a dynamic book, and many of the church's great revivals and awakenings have come through it. One of my favorite figures of modern Christian history is John Wesley, counted the founder of the Methodist movement. In his day, "Methodist" was a label of mockery—along with "Bible bigot"—because he wanted a biblical reference for everything and lived by such a strict method.

Wesley came to America to be a missionary, but the colonies kicked him out. On the voyage over, sharing a ship with a group of Moravians—amazing missionaries whose history is worth reading—he was terrified during a great storm, sure he would die, yet the Moravians had perfect peace. That peace bothered him the entire time he was in America. Back in England, he had a crisis and realized he was not actually saved—preaching the gospel and living biblically as he understood it, but not knowing the truth of the gospel. One night at a Bible study on Aldersgate Street in London, the leader read the preface of Martin Luther's commentary on Romans, and Wesley said his heart was "strangely warmed" as he came to know justification by faith. He was radically saved, and God did amazing things through him.

He wasn't the first. Martin Luther, a Catholic monk, traveled to Rome, climbed the stairs on his knees doing penance, and witnessed the paganism of the city in the 1500s. Back home in Germany, trying to save himself by his own efforts, he had his own crisis—until he read, "from faith to faith, the just shall live by faith," from Romans 1. He was radically transformed, and the Reformation began, spreading throughout Western Europe—aided by the gift God gave through Gutenberg's printing press just before. The gospel has gone throughout the whole world, and we are a product of that.

The book of Romans is a powerful and important book, and I am so excited to study through it. I've taught it twice at the Bible college with sixteen weeks each time—so eight months should be plenty, and that was with a translator. We're trusting God to do great things, asking the Lord to work in our lives so that the very things Paul describes in Romans would come to pass and be evident to our community. Amen?