PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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Paul begins his Letter (Verses 1 - 7)
First (verse 1) Paul wants the Roman Christians to know who he is.
1. He is a servant or slave of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the great Servant of the Lord. He did God’s work in the world. No one else could do what Jesus did when He died on the Cross to save us from our sins. Now people like Paul are God’s servants. They spread the Good News about Jesus. The word ‘slave’ had a shameful meaning. It is better to think of ‘servant’ here. To be a servant of someone who was great was an honour.

2. In Old Testament times oil was poured on the heads of kings and priests. They were ‘anointed’. God promised the Jews that He would give them someone who was anointed, not with oil but with His Spirit. This person would be the ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’. So when we read about ‘Christ’ we should think of Jesus as the Messiah.

Then Paul says that God has called him to be an ‘apostle’. The word ‘apostle’ means someone who has been sent out. See Acts 1:21 and 22, where Peter speaks. There the first Jerusalem chuch has to choose another Apostle. The New Testament speaks about a few other people like Silas and Barnabas as apostles. Yet if we are wise today, we shall honour men who work like the apostles, but we shall not call them apostles. God had ‘set apart’ Paul: God had made him different.

3. Then Paul says that God has set him apart to spread the Good News. Paul wants the Christians at Rome to know what they should think about him. Then he sets out great truths about the Good News.

(Verse 2) God promised to give the Good News long ages before Jesus came. God knew what He would do. Yet a thing may be very old, and be quite wrong. So Paul tells us these things:-

a) God gave these promises through His prophets.
b) Then the prophets wrote these promises down in the books which we call the Old Testament.

In verse 3, Paul begins to tell us what the Good News is.

a) The Good News is about God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We must never forget that!
b) Jesus is not only the Son of God. He also became a real man.
c) He was a man who belonged to the family of David. This was a great honour. David had been the King of Israel a thousand years before. God had spoken to him and had given him promises. Many of these promises belonged more to Jesus than they did to David.
d) (verse 4) Jesus really died, but He rose from death to new life and to glory.
e) When Jesus rose, God marked out or ’defined’ Jesus as His Son. (See note on Chapter 8 verse 29.)
f) God did this ‘with power’. ‘Power’ and ‘holiness’ together show that Jesus is God’s Son.
g) God said this through the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is ‘the Spirit of Holiness’ because He leads us to live holy lives when He lives within us.

Notice that in these verses, Paul speaks about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is One, but He is also Three.

In verse 5, Paul tells us more about what God has done in his own life. God has done this ‘through Jesus Christ’ and ‘for His name’s sake’. God has given Paul ‘grace to be an apostle’.

We should see at once that the word ‘grace’ does not always mean exactly the same thing. As we read Romans, we shall often find this word. It is only one of several great words. When we find it, we should ask each time just what it means.

a) First, it often means God’s favour and love to us. There is nothing good in us which makes God feel this favour to us. We are only sinners. God hates our sin. It is a wonder that He does not hate us too.

b) Second, the word often means more than what God feels towards us. The grace of God is so good that it makes us good. See 4:21. Grace reigns! So all that God does for His people, He does with grace.

c) Then sometimes ‘grace’ means a special gift which God gives to one of His people.

d) Here in verse 5, Paul uses the word ‘grace’ to mean something which he has. God has given it to Paul. Paul has received it.

In the same way we may speak of Christian graces. These are love, goodness, patience and so on.

Then we can see why God gave this ‘grace’ to Paul. God had plenty of work for Paul to do. His work was to spread the Good News about Jesus.

1. He was to call people to follow the Lord Jesus.
2. He was to preach not only to the Jews, but to all the other nations around.
3. The Good News was to make people have faith or believe. And then they would obey God’s will. When this happens, it brings honour to the name of Jesus.

Faith is another great word, just as grace is a great word. When we come to the word ‘faith’ we again have to ask just what it means each time.

a) First of all, it may mean that God is faithful to us. The best example of this use of the word is in Romans 3:3. Others are James 2:5 and 1 Peter 1:5. [1.1] There are many more. God is faithful to us, so we are faithful to Him.

b) Then it may be the faith which we believe. God has given His truth to us in His Word. The truth or ‘faith’ is still true whether we believe it or not.

c) If we are Christians, we believe the facts of the Good News. With our minds, we believe the truth.

d) Then we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We put our trust in Him. Our faith says:- ‘He is able to save me. He will save me because He loves me and He died for me.’ That is faith in the heart. We trust Jesus to save us and to give us life. Faith does not earn God’s gift of salvation. It could not. It only takes it from God. Faith receives salvation.

e) Real faith works. It gets a Christian to move on the road to glory. There is a way for us to go from this life to be with God. This is faith ‘into’ God. Other people may obey God for wrong reasons. We obey God because we trust Him.

Remember, that Jesus said that He is the Life, the Truth and the Way. We can see that our faith wants to have all that!

So some people from all nations believe and obey the Good News about Jesus. They all form one body which is the church.
Verse 6 Then Paul adds that all the Christians in Rome are part of that body. They may be Jews. They may be Gentiles. They have the same faith that makes them followers of Jesus. God has called them. Now they belong to Jesus. These Christians at Rome are not more important than other Christians.

In verse 7, Paul says these things about the people to whom he writes.

a) First, God has loved them. It is right that this should come first, because God chose us and loved us long before we were born.

b) Then God called us to become followers of Jesus. We heard God’s call. We followed Jesus.

c) God’s call is a call to us to be holy. We are called to be ‘saints’. God calls every Christian to be a saint. It is not that the church makes a few special Christians into ‘saints’. Some religions try to make good men even better. The Good News makes sinners into saints,

d) God calls these people to be saints in Rome. They are not to wait till they are in heaven! They can and must live holy Christian lives now in the wicked city. We are not to wait until things get easier; we have to be God’s saints now.

We have help when we seek to be God’s saints. Our help comes both from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. It is both grace and peace. God’s grace to us means that there is peace between us and God. See Romans 5:1. Then there is peace inside ourselves. There should be peace between us and other Christians. We want peace, too, with other people; see Hebrews 12:14.

Our God is the God who gives peace (Philippians 4:9). So we enjoy the peace which comes from God (Philippians 4:7) even if we do not understand it.

Verses 8-15 Why Paul wants to come to Rome.

Paul still writes about himself and the Roman Christians. After verse 17, there is a change. It is not until Chapter 4:22 that Paul starts to talk again about ’us’. In verse 8, Paul gives thanks to God for the Christians in Rome. We must always come to God the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ. Paul begins a prayer here, so he adds ‘through Jesus Christ’. People all over the Roman world talk about the faith of the Roman Christians, says Paul. They believe the Good News. They trust Jesus to save them. Their faith changes their lives. Many other good things may be said about them, but this is what pleases Paul so much. He thanks God for all of them, not just a few special people.

Of course, there were people who lived in Rome but who carried letters from Caesar to places all over the empire. Some of these people were Christians. This was just one of the ways in which people everywhere heard about the faith of the Roman Christians.

Verse 9 In verse1, Paul called himself God’s servant or slave. Now he says more about the work which he does. ‘Spirit’ here is better than ‘my whole heart’. Paul’s work is to preach the Good News about Jesus. God knows, says Paul, that he always prays for the Christians at Rome.

Verse 10 Part of Paul’s prayer is that he asks God to let him go to Rome. This must be ‘by God’s will’, however. So often we want our own way. We think at times that we know better than God does. Paul knows that his visit to Rome will do no good unless it is ‘by God’s will’. God may have other work fo him to do first. Paul knows that he has first to go to Jerusalem.

We can read about what happened to Paul if we look at the Book of Acts. Paul wrote this letter to Rome at the time of Acts 20:3. The journey to Jerusalem takes us as far as Acts 21:15-17; this is spring AD 57. Paul reaches Rome in Acts 28:16. By now it is March of April of AD 60. Paul is no longer free. For three years he has been a prisoner of the Romans. So although God did answer Paul’s prayer, it was not an easy answer. We never know how God will give us what we ask Him for. When He gives it to us, we cannot say: ‘That is not quite what I expected’. We cannot give it back to God.

In verse 11, Paul moves on to tell the Christians in Rome why he wants to come to them. God has given to Paul gifts which are the work of His Holy Spirit. Now Paul wants to share these gifts with the Christians at Rome. It may be that some of the other apostles from Jerusalem had been to Rome. The work of the apostles was to visit the churches. They may have shared the gifts which the Holy Spirit had given to them.

We can see the way that these gifts would be used. They would not just make one Christian feel good. The Christian who had one gift would use it to make another Christian strong. He had another gift, and he would use that to make the first Christian strong. That is ‘fellowship’. Then in verse 12, Paul says that he does not just want to give. The Roman Christians have gifts already which they can share with Paul. Paul is not too proud to take what other Christians can give to him. God gave His gifts so that the whole church could be built up. There is no one in the church who is so poor that he cannot share something which will help other people.

In verse 13 Paul says again that he has tried to come to Rome before. He does not want people in Rome to think that he did not care about them. If you look at 2 Corinthians 10:16 you will see one reason why Paul had not made the journey. There had been trouble in the church at Corinth. Paul had to put that right.

Now we may say: ‘Perhaps the trouble in my church is my fault. But it does not really matter’. We can see here that trouble in one church may check the good that God does somewhere far away. Paul had to put this trouble right before he could travel further west. Paul speaks about ‘a harvest at Rome as well as among the other Gentiles.’ Gentiles are the other nations who are not Jews. This means that many of the Christians at Rome were not Jews. ‘The harvest’, of course, would be made up of people saved through Paul’s preaching in Rome.

So in verse 14, Paul says that he has debts to pay off. He does not mean debts of money, of course. He has a debt to pay back both to the Greeks and to the people who were not Greeks. The Greeks were clever and they thought that they were wise. The Greeks thought that other people were not nearly as good as they were. The word ’foolish’ here is a bit too strong. The people who were not Greeks were less wise, or just simple. Paul does not want to say here;- ’Greeks are good: other people are not so good - or even bad’. He means that all kinds of people have taught him. He has preached the Good News to them and he has seen many of them believe it. This has given him joy. So now he wants to preach the Good News to all kinds of people in Rome. He will bring great joy to them and so he will pay back the debt which he feels that he owes.

Verses 16 and 17 The Gospel which Paul will bring to Rome.

Honour and shame are opposites. It would not be true for Paul to say that he was proud of the Good News. Pride is not the opposite of shame. He can say that it is an honour for him to preach the Good News.

Now the ideas of ’honour’ and ’shame’ mean much more in some parts of the world than in others. In what we call ’the Western World’, these ideas do not really mean much. In New Testament times they were most important. [1.2] They are ideas which play a part in this Letter, and we should note them with care.

We too must never feel shame about Jesus or the Good News (Mark 8:38; 2 Timothy 1:8).

So we may say these things:-

1. That the heathen world has plenty to feel shame about.

2. We must ask:- ’Are we a shame to the Good News’?

3. God is not ashamed to be called ’our God’ (Hebrews 11;16). This is very wonderful, and it is only true because of the Good News.

4. We should not feel shame about any part of the Good News.

5. Paul will not feel shame about the Good News, even in the great proud city of Rome. We should not feel shame about the Good News, wherever we are. IThe Good News is not work which men try to do for God.

6. The world does not honour the Good News, and in the church in this world there is much about which we have to feel shame. Yet even so, we feel no shame about the Good News.

Now in verse 16, Paul says these things about the Good News.

a) It is the power (or ‘dynamic’) of God. It is the way God works. Here we should not think about the power of a great engine or machine. This is the power of God’s grace.

b) This power is not at rest. It is at work. Its work is to bring salvation to lost men and women. We shall see later what it means to be lost!

To be saved means that God rescues us from danger or death.
c) Jews and the people of other nations - the Gentiles - were lost. True, the Jews had God’s Law and His Word. They were better off than the other nations. So the Good News came first to them before it came to the other nations. Still, it was the same Good News for all men. God’s will is still today the same. He wants men and women everywhere to hear and to believe the Good News.

When we look at verse 17, we have first to ask what the word ‘righteousness’ means. It is another great word which does not always mean exactly the same thing. So we have to ask just what it means here. If you use an NIV Bible you will see that it says ‘by faith from first to last’. What Paul wrote here was ‘out of faith into faith’. So other Bibles may quite rightly say ‘from faith to faith’. Then Paul uses some words which we can find in the Old Testament. They come from Habakkuk 2:4. You will find them again in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38. They will be a little different because Habakkuk’s Hebrew has first been turned into Greek and the Greek has then been turned into English. ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’. ‘The man who is just by faith in Christ shall live now and forever’.

So we must think first about that word righteousness.

a) First of all, we know that God is holy. He is pure. We may think that some people whom we know lead holy lives. Yet they are still sinners. The angels are more holy than any man because they have no sin. Yet God is far more holy than the angels. When we say that God is holy, we also mean that He is separate. He is far above not only the earth, but heaven as well. See Isaiah 6:1.

b) God would be holy even if He did not do anything. All His thoughts are holy, and so is all that He plans to do.

c) So all that God does is right and it shows His righteousness. See Romans 3:5,21,22,23 and 26 and 10:3.

d) Then righteousness is the way in which God puts right what is wrong.

e) God is the great Judge of all, and all that He does as Judge is righteous. Some people feel that the thought of God as Judge is always there when the word righteousness is used.

f) Then because God is righteous, He has the right to tell men that they should be righteous. They are not righteous of course; they are sinners.

g) Jesus is the Son of God. He has the righteousness of God. He is also the Son of Man Who obeyed God’s will perfectly. So He has the righteousness that no other man has. When He died for us on the Cross, He gained another righteousness. See 2 Corinthians 5:21. He was ‘made sin for us’, so that, in Him, we could have ‘the righteousness of God’.

h) So our Lord Jesus Christ has far more righteousness than He needs for Himself. He has plenty to give to us. The only righteousness that we can ever have is the righteousness that He gives to us. We often say that it is reckoned or ‘imputed’ to us. Then we are ’justified’. People often say that this means:- ’It is just as if I had never sinned’. This is helpful.

We are sinners. God would be righteous to us if He punished us. Instead, the Lord Jesus, God’s dear Son, took the punishment. So God is righteous to the Lord Jesus. He has taken the punishment, and God will not punish the same sins again. God spoke, and He made the world. That same word makes sinners righteous. What we do could never make us righteous. So in this verse, Paul says these things about the Good News.

1. God has a righteousness. Once a curtain hid it from us.
2. Now the curtain has gone. This righteous is not hidden any more. It is ’revealed’.
3. This righteousness comes from God to men. God’s faithfulness is the way that God gives it to us. He has promised, and He keeps His Word. [1.3]
4. Then faith is the way that we receive this righteousness.

So Paul adds the words from Habakkuk at the end of the verse. We live by receiving God’s righteousness. We have new life in Christ. Then we also have the promise of more life. God promises a full life after we die. We shall see His glory.

Sadly, it is not only God’s righteousness which He makes known or reveals to us.

Verses 18-32 God’s anger against sin.

In verse 18, Paul tells us that God’s wrath is also revealed. See Colossians 3:6 and Ephesians 5:6. This is a sign of God’s righteousness. The righteousness of God was revealed in the Old Testament writings. It is revealed in human life. It is above all, revealed at the Cross where Jesus died. God’s wrath comes from heaven. It does not just ‘happen’. We may think about God’s wrath as His great anger against sin. This is because when God punishes sin, He looks angry to the sinner. Yet we should remember that God does not feel anger in the way that we do.

God is angry with two kinds of sin. First comes ‘ungodliness’ or godlessness. This means that we sin against God. Then there is ‘wickedness’ or ‘unrighteousness’. This means that we sin against other people.

Look at the Ten Commandments. You will find them in Exodus 20:2-27 or in Deuteronomy 5:6 - 21. The first four commandments have to do with our sins against God. The other six have to do with our sins against other people. These are the same two kinds of sin.

Now Paul says here that men ‘supress’ the truth. It is as though they keep it in prison. [1.4] ‘Truth’ here may mean mostly the anger of God against sin; it may well mean much more than that. When men ‘supress’ the truth they hold it down. They hold it back. The truth about God is a lively thing. It wants to get up and work. Men try to stop it. They know the difference that the truth would make in their lives, so they check it. They hold down the truth in other people and in themselves. They are quite willing to use wrong ways to hold the truth down and this is ‘unrighteousness’. The more we sin, the more we want to hold the truth down.

When we come to verse 19, we must be rather careful. There is much that we do not know about God (Deuteronomy 29:29). God makes plain to us what He wants us to know. It is all that we need to know. It is all that it is good for us to know about God. However much we try and work and think, we shall never find out more. What we know about God is what He shows to us. What we do not know about God is all good. It all should add to our worship of Him.

Paul says that what we know about God is plain in or ‘among’ men. Perhaps he means that if you talk to one man on his own, you may not see that this is true. You have to get to know lots of people.

It is in verse 20 that Paul explains what this knowledge of God is. Paul speaks in a very strange way here. He will do this again later in this letter. He talks about ‘invisible’ things that is, things which we cannot see. Then he says these things are clearly seen. We might call this a ‘contradiction‘. Here it is rather a ‘paradox’. God is so different from us that we may have to talk about Him like this. So what Paul teaches here is this:-

1. There are things about God which are eternal. They were true about Him before Creation began. If God sweeps away the whole Creation, these things will still be just as true.
2. When we look at the world and the skies, we can see the power of God. So this is one of the eternal things that we see.
3. The other thing which is ’seen’ is God’s nature. He is greater than men or angels. He is beyond the earth and even above and beyond the heavens. This is His ’divine nature’. God is not just a force at work inside the world. Some people sadly believe that. He is outside all the wonderful things that we can see around us.

Now these things about God cannot be seen themselves. Yet Paul says that we ought to look at all the things which God has made. Then we can see that God’s power and nature are true.

Men are only just finding out how wonderful the human body is. A few years ago we had no idea how great the stars in heaven are. The more we know, the more there is to learn. A hundred years ago, life and creation all seemed quite simple. Now we know that it is not simple at all. It could not just have happened. God made it all. So says Paul, men will not be able to stand in front of God and say:- ’We are sorry. We did not know’. There is much, much more than this to know about God. Still, men have no excuse.

Verse 21 Men may not know very much about God. Still, says Paul, there are two things that they ought to do.

a) They ought to give glory to God. They ought to honour Him because He is so wonderful.

b) They ought to give thanks to Him. They should praise Him for all the good things which He has done.

Men do not do this. You would expect that they would say;- ’There is no god’. Some men do say this, of course. It happens much more today than it did in the past. If people ’hold down’ the truth about God, you would expect them to say that there is no god. (Psalm 14:1)

They would say it, even if they do not really think it. Paul says that two things then happen.

a) People think about God. They may talk about Him and argue with each other. It gets them nowhere. It is all useless.

b) So what happens in the mind then goes deeper. It touches the heart, which becomes dark. We think with our minds. Our hearts have to do with our feelings and our will.

May God give to us new hearts which are full of His light!

Verse 22 Paul so far speaks mostly about the people who were clever. They thought that they were wise or we might say ’smart’. These were the great thinkers among the Greeks. What they did proved that they were not wise at all. They turned into fools (verse 23) because they turned to the worship of false ’gods’. See Psalm 115:8. Men become like their ’gods’. They tried to change what can never change! No one can ever change God’s glory into something else. Men wanted ’gods’ which they could rule (Verse 25). In place of God’s glory they set up idols. God is life, and He lives for ever. Men set up dead idols, which looked like men who die. Even worse still they made ‘gods’ like birds and animals. We see much wrong worship of God. We must be sure that we worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

God gave man honour in Genesis 1:26-28. Man was to rule over the earth and all living things. Men who worship idols as ‘gods’ turn this upside down. See Isaiah 44:20 for ‘the lie’. Many people today no longer worship idols. Yet they do not understand that God has made man to rule this world. We must be wise. We must not spoil or destroy the good world which God has trusted us with. Sadly, this is what we see today because men are greedy. Yet God has given us a little of His power to create. We may make this good world even better. Indeed this is a duty which God has given to all men.

In verse 18, Paul spoke about sins against God and sins against men. From verse 18 down to verse 23 he says more about men’s sins against God. Now from verse 24 Paul talks about the way that men sin against each other. In verses 24-27 he speaks about sins to do with sex. Such sins were all too common in Paul’s day in cities like Corinth and Rome. They are far too common today too. Then from verse 28 down to verse 32, he speaks about many other sins. In verse 32, Paul begins to speak about God’s judgement. This then leads into the first part of Chapter 2.

Verses 24, 26 and 28 would have been so much easier if Paul had not said:- ‘God gave them up’. See Psalm 81:12 and Acts 7:42. Yet this is true. Men held down the truth (verse 18) so now God does not hold them back. The heart (verse 21) should be full of light, but it is dark. The heart should lead men to honour their own bodies. Men do not honour God. So they do not honour their own bodies. See 1 Cor 6:19. Instead dark hearts bring shame on the bodies of men. We all have desires. We may use our desires in a good way when a man and woman marry and love each other. That is pure. But we may use our sex desires outside marriage. That is bad.

The second half of verse 26 may mean that women make love to one another. Verse 27 speaks about men who are ‘burned out’ with desire to have sex with other men. They no longer have any desire for women. We know in our own day that Paul is right. This awful sin has spread illness, pain and death through many parts of the world.

In verse 28, Paul says for the third time that God gave men up to their sins. It was not just the one kind of sin in matters of sex (Exodus 20:14). God might have done something to hold men back from sin. He did not. They did not think it was worth their while to know God. This left an empty space in their minds which was filled up with what was wrong. A good mind is full of the knowledge of God, with no room for what is bad. And because people’s minds were full of bad thoughts, what they did was bad too. Paul now gives us a long list of what is wrong. Of course he does not mean that all this is wrong with everyone.

All these bad things have opposites. Those opposites should make up our Christian life. It may help if we list what they are.

In verse 32, Paul adds these things:-
1. God’s law about these things is right.
2. This law is that people who do these things should die. See Genesis 2:17.
3. These people know that this is God’s law.
4. They do not just go on doing these wrong things themselves.
5. They are quite happy to see other people who do these same things. They cheer them on. See Psalm 50:17-21.

We Christians, too, know God’s law and we know that it is right and good. So we do not do these things, and we do not like it at all when we see other people who do them.

We shall see some goodness in people around us who are not Christians. It is not all as bad as Paul says here. If it was, we could not live together. We should be thankful to God for all the goodness that we see. Yet even people who we think are quite good may very quickly become violent and cruel.

Before we can go on to look at Chapter 2, we have to see one other thing in verse 32. God only is the Judge of all men. We may not even judge ourselves. See 1 Corinthians 4:3 and 4, and 1 John 3:19 and 20. We may not judge other people. (See Matthew 7:1; Luke 6:37.) James says something more than this, too. In James 4:11 and 12 he warns us not to judge the Law of God. Now this is what the man in verse 32 does. He sees someone who does what is wrong. Perhaps it is a friend. He says:- ’Well, it is all right if he does it’. So he says that God’s Law is wrong. In fact, this happens all the time. It is nothing new, either. See Isaiah 5:20. If we can see that, it may help us to understand Chapter 2.

We have used the word ’law’. Paul does not use it in Romans until verse 12 in the next chapter. It is another important word, and the exact meaning of it may not always be quite the same. It may mean the law of God which tells all men what is right and wrong. It may be the Law of Moses, with the Old Testament worship. Some people think that it means only those points of the law which made the Jews so different from other people.