Romans

What makes Romans special?

In this letter, Paul provides his most detailed summary of the good news about Jesus Christ. But Romans is more than a letter; it is also a well-organized essay. In the early church, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians sometimes disagreed about what made a person acceptable to God and how the followers of Christ should live. In Romans, Paul boldly announces that the good news is “God's powerful way of saving all people who have faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles” (1.16).

Why was Romans written?

Paul wrote this letter about a.d. 55-56 to introduce himself to the followers of Christ at Rome, who likely included new Gentile Christians as well as Jewish Christians who had returned to Rome after being thrown out some years earlier (see below). These Christians, as well as Christians in other parts of the Mediterranean world, had more than one way of understanding the good news. Jewish Christians in Rome and in Jerusalem continued to follow the Law of Moses, but Gentile Christians did not follow the Law. So, who was right? What place, if any, did the Law of Moses have for Gentile Christians? And how did the people of Israel fit into God's plan for sharing the good news?

Paul teaches in Romans that the good news was based in the beginning on God's promise to Israel's ancestor Abraham, whose faith made him acceptable to God (4.13). The Law, given later to Moses and the people of Israel, revealed how God's people were to live. Still later, God sent Jesus Christ to forgive sins and make people acceptable because of their faith, something which the Law on its own could not do (3.21-26). This did not mean the Law was useless or that the people who followed the Law (Israel) were no longer part of God's people. But now, Paul says, only those who have faith in Jesus Christ can become fully acceptable to God.

What's the story behind the scene?

A group of believers who trusted in Jesus Christ as God's Messiah existed in Rome long before Paul planned his trip there. By a.d. 49 or 50, Jews who were not Jesus' followers and this new group of Jesus' followers were fighting so much that the Roman Emperor Claudius made them all leave Rome (see Acts 18.1-4). Among the followers of Jesus who left were a married couple, Priscilla and Aquila, who later worked with Paul as tentmakers in Corinth and Ephesus (Acts 18.3; 1 Cor 16.19; Rom 16.3). Eventually, some of these followers returned to Rome, and Paul hoped to visit them on his way to bringing the good news to Spain (15.28). But before he could make this trip, Paul wanted to take to Jerusalem the money he had collected from Gentile Christians in Macedonia and Achaia to give to the church in Jerusalem (15.26-29). He hoped that the teachings he had presented in this letter would also be acceptable to the Jewish Christians there (15.30-32). The author of Acts reports that Paul eventually got to Rome when he was taken there as a prisoner of the Roman emperor (Acts 27,28). The Bible does not say whether or not he ever visited or preached the good news in Spain.

How is Romans constructed?

Romans is a letter written in the traditional Greek letter writing style of the first century a.d. Letter writers in Paul's day usually first identified who was sending the letter (1.1-6), then gave the names of the persons they were writing to (1.8). This was usually followed by a greeting. As in most of Paul's letters, a prayer of thanksgiving follows the greeting (1.8-15), and the letter closes with a final greeting and blessing (16.1-27).

The letter as a whole can be outlined in this way: