Romans Introduction and Overview

This is a study of Paul's Letter to the Romans that we did at Walk on Wednesdays in the summer of 2017.  I reproduced it with some edits for the Walk lads in the spring of 2020 as the houses were going into 'lockdown', and also made it available on the Dove Church YouTube channel.

I'm now making the transcript available for anyone who's interested.

Romans is a big book – both in the sense that it’s long, but it’s also really important. Part of the reason for studying it before was that it gets into the detail of what grace is and how faith works. It also discusses righteousness: God’s righteousness and how we can be righteous too.

So, big, important stuff. But this will only be an overview, really. We could spend a long time studying Romans – so we’ll try to take a chapter per session – maybe two sessions for Chapter 8 because it’s long. 

Always start by praying.

Pray something like this:

Lord, please give us wisdom and understanding as we approach Your word.
May whatever we learn today help us to serve You better.
Please show us something that we’ve never seen before.
May what we see in Your Book help us to see You more clearly, love you more dearly and follow You more nearly today.

Then,,, 

• Read the chapter aloud. These notes are based on the NLT version, but it’s a good idea to have a couple of different versions available – maybe an ESV or an NKJV would be good.

• Look at the notes. They should help you understand what Paul is saying.

• Discuss the questions. You can do this on your own, but it’s really intended to fire discussion of the important subjects Paul raises.

Background to Romans

This book was written to the Christian Church at Rome by the apostle Paul, probably around AD 57 or 58.

For context, that’s about 15 years after the Roman invasion of Britain; it’s about 30 years before Vesuvius blew up and destroyed Pompeii, and about 12 years before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jewish people.

Most of the first Christians were Jewish, which makes sense because Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. But Paul’s special task, given to him by Jesus himself, was to take the Gospel to the Gentiles – that is, the non-Jews.

• What does the word ‘Messiah’ mean to you? (Note: Christ means the same thing.)

(Everyone who isn’t a Jew is a Gentile, which is most people.)

This led to an interesting and often tense situation in the early churches for two reasons.

• The non-Jews had a very different understanding of ‘God’ from the Jews. They would have grown up believing in the Greek or Roman gods, with no particular ‘theology’ or religious structure, though some may have belonged to cults of one kind or another.

• Meanwhile the Jewish Christians had a very clear sense of who God was and what he was like – and also that he was the God of the Jews and not the Gentiles. Most Jews expected that the non-Jews would have to become Jews before they could become Christians. They wanted the men to be circumcised!

There had been a small Christian community in Rome, which had both Jewish and non-Jewish members. Then the Roman Emperor, Claudius, threw all the Jews out of Rome (sometime between AD 41-54) – many of whom finished up in Corinth, but that’s another story.

When the Jews eventually returned, they found that the non-Jewish Christians had been doing quite well without them – so Paul’s primary purpose for writing the letter is to unify the different sections of the church. This is one of Paul’s common themes.

• What are some of the divisions among Christians today?

Paul does this by giving a thorough explanation of the power of the Gospel, and how, though its origins are in the Jewish faith, it is for everyone and has the power to transform everyone.

The key verse is Romans 1: 16:

For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile.
The Structure of Paul’s Letter to the Romans

This book is a letter, written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome. There are 4 basic sections:

Chapters 1-4

The Gospel (the good news about Jesus Christ) reveals God’s righteousness and his power to save.

Chapters 1 & 2: everyone is trapped in sin, Jews and Gentiles alike – but the Jews ought to know better because of Moses’ Law.

In Chapters 3 & 4 he shows how Jews and Gentiles are both made right with God (‘justified’) by faith in Christ, and this is exactly how Abraham, the founder of the Jewish people, lived, way before Moses’ Law, which partially fulfils God’s promise to Abraham.

Chapters 5-8

The Gospel creates a new kind of human being.

Chapters 5 & 6: We don’t have favour with God because of anything we could do but because of his grace; Adam, the first human, placed the whole human race in slavery to sin, but Jesus takes us all out of slavery and gives us freedom. This is illustrated by baptism – as we take on a new identity in Jesus, we are liberated from Adam’s curse. We are moved from death to life.

In Chapters 7 and 8, Paul explains why God gave the Law to the Jews, which was to identify and define sin: it makes them explicitly guilty. Paul appears to wrestle with the logic of this. Then in Chapter 8, the solution is revealed: as the Law focuses God’s anger against sin on the Jewish people, Jesus’ death and resurrection take away that anger and release God’s Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers.

Chapters 1-8 use a lot of courtroom language – law, righteousness, justice, guilt, condemnation, justification. The language of crime and punishment runs through them: we are condemned in sin; justified by faith; Jesus took the punishment for our sins upon himself. (This language doesn’t always come through in the NLT.) 

Chapters 9-11

So, what about Israel? (The Jewish Christians are obviously very interested in this.) Paul explains how God has always selected certain people and rejected others, and that this is never based on their performance, it’s to do with God’s long-term purpose.
In Chapter 10, he reminds the Jews that acceptance by God is never based on how well they can keep the Law, but only through faith in Christ. In this way, the Jews who believe now become part of God’s wide family of faith.

In Chapter 11 Paul explains that God has not finished with Israel. While most of the Jews have rejected Christ for the time being, in the end they will come back.

Chapters 12-16

Practically, what does this new life look like? Conflict is bound to happen with such a diverse community of believers. In Chapters 12 & 13, he explains that love is the answer. Jesus has given us gifts to enable us to serve on another in humility. This fulfils the Old Testament commands to love God and our neighbours.

In Chapter 14 and 15 he shows how love and mutual respect is the key to healing differences and divisions within the church, and finally, in Chapter 16, Paul greets various brothers and sisters by name. The people’s names seem strange because they are ancient Romans.

Interestingly, the first teaching on the Letter to the Romans may well have been given by a woman – Phoebe.