Summary: Bible - Book of Romans

The GIST

Romans is a letter, and the longest of the thirteen in the New Testament that carry the name of Paul the Apostle. He wrote it to Christians in Rome, a community he had not founded and had never visited, most likely from Corinth in the winter of about AD 56 or 57. A scribe took it down and added a greeting of his own near the end: "I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord." Tradition and several manuscripts name Phoebe, a leader of the church at the nearby port of Cenchreae, as the person who carried it to Rome. Paul's authorship is not seriously doubted by anyone.

It is by common consent his masterpiece. For ten years he had been founding churches around the Aegean Sea, and he now meant to go on to Spain, stopping in Rome on the way. The letter introduces him and his message to a church he hoped would support the journey. That church included believers of both Jewish and Gentile background, and there are signs of tension between them. So Paul sets out, at length and with great care, what he calls the gospel: how God puts people right with himself through Jesus Christ, and what that means for Jew and Gentile alike. The result has shaped Christian thought more than any other single document.

What It Says

Opening (1:1 to 1:17). Paul introduces himself as an apostle and gives a compressed statement of his message about Jesus, a descendant of David. He thanks God for the Roman Christians' faith and explains that he has long wanted to visit and has been prevented. Then he states his theme in two verses that govern everything after: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." In it, he says, God's righteousness is revealed, and he cites the prophet's words, "The just shall live by faith."

Everyone stands guilty (1:18 to 3:20). Before the good news comes the diagnosis. Paul begins with the pagan world. Human beings knew enough of God from what he had made, and turned from him to idols; God gave them over to the consequences, and Paul lists them at length. Then he turns on the person who has been nodding in agreement, the one who judges others while doing the same things. God, he says, shows no partiality. There will be trouble for everyone who does evil and glory for everyone who does good, "to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." Possessing the law is not the same as keeping it. Gentiles who do what the law requires show it written in their hearts, and real belonging is inward: "circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter." The conclusion is universal. Jew and Gentile alike are under the power of sin.

Set right as a gift (3:21 to 5:21). Here the letter turns. A righteousness from God has now been made known apart from the law, though the law and the prophets bear witness to it. It comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, and there is no distinction: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." People are justified, that is, declared in the right before God, freely, by his grace. It is a gift and leaves no room for boasting.

Paul's proof is Abraham. The father of the Jewish people was counted righteous before he was circumcised and long before the law was given, on the basis of trust alone: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." He is therefore the father of all who believe, whatever their origin.

The results follow. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." And the ground of confidence is God's love shown at the cross: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Paul then sets two figures side by side. Through one man, Adam, sin and death came into the world and spread to all. Through one man, Jesus Christ, grace and life have come, and the gift outweighs the damage.

Freed from sin, and the struggle that remains (chapters 6 and 7). An objection arises at once, and Paul states it himself, in the style of a debate with an imagined critic that he uses throughout the letter. "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" His answer is an emphatic no. Those who have been baptized into Christ have been joined to his death and to his risen life. They have changed masters. Once slaves of sin, they now belong to God, and the two services pay very differently: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Chapter 7 takes up the law. Paul insists that the law is holy and good, yet says that it cannot give the power to do what it commands, and that sin uses the commandment to provoke the very thing it forbids. The passage becomes a cry from inside a divided self: "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Life in the Spirit (chapter 8). The answer comes in what many regard as the summit of the letter. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." What the law could not do, God has done by sending his Son and giving his Spirit. Believers are God's children and heirs. The whole creation groans, waiting to be set free, and the Spirit helps them in their weakness. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." The chapter ends in a kind of hymn. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Paul runs through the candidates, including hardship, persecution, famine and the sword, and declares himself persuaded that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come" can do it.

What about Israel? (chapters 9 to 11). The joy gives way to grief. "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart," Paul writes, because most of his own people have not accepted Jesus as Messiah. Has God's promise failed? These three dense chapters wrestle with the question. God's word has not failed, he argues, because belonging to Israel was never simply a matter of descent. God is free in his mercy, as a potter is free with clay. Salvation is offered to all on the same terms: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," and "faith cometh by hearing." Then he asks directly, "Hath God cast away his people?" and answers, "God forbid. For I also am an Israelite."

He offers an image. Israel is a cultivated olive tree. Some branches have been broken off, and Gentile believers, shoots from a wild olive, have been grafted in. They have no ground for pride, since they are carried by the root, and the natural branches can be grafted back into their own tree far more easily. Paul looks ahead to a day when "all Israel shall be saved." He ends the argument in wonder: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

How to live (12:1 to 15:13). On the basis of all this mercy, Paul turns to conduct. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." What follows is practical. Believers are one body with different gifts. Love must be sincere. Bless those who persecute you; leave vengeance to God. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

Chapter 13 addresses the state: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." Taxes and respect are to be paid where they are due. Every other obligation is gathered into one: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

Chapters 14 and 15 deal with a concrete dispute in the Roman church over food and holy days. Paul calls the more scrupulous party "weak in the faith" and the others strong, and asks both for the same thing: welcome one another, stop passing judgment, and do nothing that would cause a brother or sister to stumble.

Plans and greetings (15:14 to 16:27). Paul explains his travel plans. First he must take a collection to the poor believers in Jerusalem, and then, "Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you." He commends Phoebe and sends greetings to more than twenty people by name, about a third of them women, including a congregation that meets in the house of Priscilla and Aquila. A doxology closes the letter.

Why It Matters

Romans has repeatedly been the book through which Christianity renewed or redefined itself. Martin Luther lectured on it in 1515 and 1516, as his criticism of the church of his day was taking shape, and called it the most important piece in the New Testament and the purest gospel. William Tyndale passed that judgment on to English readers. In 1738 John Wesley, hearing Luther's preface to Romans read aloud in London, felt his heart "strangely warmed," an experience often treated as the starting point of Methodism.

The letter stands at the center of the oldest disagreement in Western Christianity. Protestants read it as teaching that a person is put right with God by faith and not by righteous deeds, pointing to passages such as the one on Abraham; Luther went so far as to add the word alone to his German translation of one verse, and defended the choice. Roman Catholics affirm the necessity of faith and also point to Paul's statement in chapter 2 that God will repay each person according to his works, and to passages that speak of continuing in God's kindness. Both find support in the text.

Other passages have their own histories of debate. The verses on obedience to governing authorities have been used to discourage resistance to rulers, a reading that some theologians call a misuse. The chapters on Israel are central to Christian thinking about Judaism, and scholars stress that Paul writes as a Jew who insists that God has not rejected his people. The opening critique of the pagan world, and how its harshest lines should be understood, is also disputed.

Scholars note that Romans is not a complete summary of Christian doctrine. It is silent on subjects Paul treats elsewhere, and it was written for a particular situation. They also note that the letter circulated early in shorter forms of fourteen and fifteen chapters, and some have wondered whether the final chapter of greetings was originally a separate note.

Who Should Read It

Read Romans if you want to understand what Christians mean by grace, faith and salvation, from the earliest and most influential statement of those ideas. It is demanding, and it is better read slowly, one section at a time. Believers of every tradition will find their own convictions rooted here and challenged here. Anyone interested in the history of ideas should read chapters 1 to 8 at least once.