Welcome to Rome!

My first year here, I led a study of Mark...lots of rich narratives, Jesus walking on water, healing the sick, driving out demons, dead, buried and risen. Then last year I worked through Genesis; again, high drama from Creation through the patriarchs and then the heart-rending story of Joseph. We are starting this Fall with Romans, which is not so much narrative as it is DOCTRINE. But that's okay...as Dorothy Sayers used to say, "The dogma is the drama." The central, essential truths of our faith are the most wonderful and touching story earth has ever seen...the story of salvation offered to the lost, through faith in Christ.

Romans is not so much about the Romans in particular. Most of Paul's other letters were addressed to specific needs in particular communities; Romans tells us more about Paul's central beliefs than anything about the Romans. If the book had jacket blurbs, there would be a photo of Paul wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, and it would be peppered with quotes from fans of the book:

“Time and again in the course of Christian history it has liberated minds, brought us back to an understanding of the essential nature of the gospel, and started spiritual revolutions.” F.F. Bruce

“The probability is that every great spiritual revival in the church (is a result) of a deeper understanding of this book.” F.L. Godet

“When anyone gains a knowledge of this Epistle he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture.” John Calvin

“It is the fullest, plainest and grandest statement of the gospel in the NT. Its message is not that ‘man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains,’ as Rousseau put it; it is rather that human beings are born in sin and slavery, but that Jesus Christ came to set us free.” JRW Stott

“If a tyrant destroyed all of Scripture, but Romans and John escaped, Christianity would be saved.” - Martin Luther

God's Holy Spirit has used this book time and again to save and to revive. In 386ad, a young man named Augustine heard a voice chanting, "Take it up and read it; take it up and read it." He picked up a nearby Bible and read a passage from Romans and was saved, much to the joy of his praying mother. In 1515 a miserable Augustinian monk named Martin was lecturing on the book of Romans, and suddenly felt the gates of paradise open for his own soul. His gloomy legalism fell away before the teaching of God's grace in Christ, and the Protestant Reformation began. In 1738, an Anglican priest named John listened as someone read from Martin Luther's preface to Romans, and felt that God had personally forgiven his own sins for Christ's sake, and the Methodist Revival began. In 1918, a German theologian published a commentary on Romans in which he detailed his discovery that Christianity was not merely a vehicle for radical socialism in the world, but the proclamation that God in His grace could act to save the spirits of humanity. Karl Barth's commentary hit the playground of liberal theologians like a holy hand grenade. Such stories could be repeated throughout history; and now, in 2010, a group of believers at Norcross First UMC opened the Bible and began to read...who knows what God might do?

Paul most likely wrote Romans while he was staying at Corinth, the Las Vegas or perhaps the Bangkok of the ancient world. He writes about his hopes to move west, to visit Rome and then branch as far out as Spain to proclaim the news about Jesus. Perhaps he hoped that Rome would become for him, as Antioch had been, a base of operations.

Romans has many famous passages, and many difficult ones. We will find in chapters one and two that the entire world, Gentile and Jewish, is locked up in bondage to sin and guilt. There is none righteous, no, not one. We will come to see the importance of righteousness, which means to have a right standing before God, to be declared "in the right" with the Almighty. None of us have this, and none can earn it for themselves. But in the gospel, God has revealed a way to achieve this wonderful right standing; it comes to those who, by God's grace, put their faith in Jesus Christ. This was an alarming claim, and Paul spends much time explaining that it is true and why it matters. Abraham (chapter 4) is held up as the prime example of someone who "was reckoned as righteous" not because of his works, but because "he believed God." Faith is the key. Paul will talk about new life in Christ in chapter 5. Then he will look at various problems that arise if we accept this teaching about faith and grace. In chapter 6 Paul will ask, if grace is true, why not just go on sinning? In chapter 7 he will draw a terrible picture of a life dominated by sin, and then he will move into chapter 8, the glory of a life dominated by the Spirit of God. In chapters 9-11 Paul will discuss God's intentions for Israel, and in the closing chapters he will deal with various relational matters: how we relate to God, self, others, the state, and finally the weaker brother.

At the heart of Romans is 1:17: "For in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written (in Habbakuk): the just (or the righteous) shall live by faith." This is gospel indeed, good news; our right standing with God is not "from" us, it is "from God," a gift; it is attained not by works, but by simple trust in God through Christ. This is simply another way of expressing the truth found in John 3:16: "...whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."