A Letter to the Roman Church

What would cause a person to write a letter to people he didn’t even know, with a few exceptions? This is what the apostle Paul did when he wrote his letter to the church at Rome, the piece of literature in the Bible we call the “book” of Romans. This “book” is really a letter penned by a scribe or an amanuensis for Paul as he most likely dictated to the individual (there is evidence in another book of Paul’s penmanship perhaps being bad, due to either bad eyesight or just perhaps bad penmanship).

There are debates as to the purpose of Paul’s writing, and to the theme of the writing. The book is one of heavy doctrinal information regarding the Christian faith, perhaps the most systematized book in the Bible, yet it began as a letter to strangers who held in common a faith in the one that they called Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. What would cause someone to write a letter this heavy in detail and doctrine to strangers, and at the same time write it in a way that was different with intent than any previous letter preserved in the Bible that he also authored?

We find clues throughout the book of Romans in the different segments (designated chapters as of the early 1500 or 1600's with the publication of the Geneva Bible) both in the beginning and in the latter chapters. These reasons range from Paul’s intent to travel to new regions that have apparently not been evangelized before, to describing his desire to visit the city of which he was a citizen, but in all of his life had never seen. There are reasons given that perhaps Paul had special concerns about regarding the division between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians who were apparently beginning to grow apart. These divisions appear to have been based upon cultural misunderstandings of each other’s living out this new faith of Christianity in light of their previous religious and cultural understandings. The Jewish Christians had been exiled from Rome on at least two or perhaps three occasions within a period of about forty or fifty years depending on the whim of the emperor at the time. The Jews as a group were blamed for mishaps that occurred that caused the emperor to order them out of Rome entirely, and during this occasion, the Jewish Christians were included with this exile, though not potentially classified as such in the way of their brethren, though the differences that we understand today may be more stark and contrasted than they themselves would have understood themselves.

The Jewish Christians at the time were unique in a way that most other Christians of other eras may never fully appreciate. The Jews who accepted Christ as their long-awaited and prophesied Messiah realized the fulfillment of their Scriptures in their lifetimes, and did not fully realize the significance of the freedom that they now had in the way of sacrifice and Temple worship that had been such a large part of their previous experience or understanding of God’s will or commands for the way that they were to worship. The freedom that had now been given to them came through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ, and His fulfillment of the Law perfectly through His obedience, that now set free those under the Law to not have to find their righteousness in the “keeping of the Law for righteousness’ sake”. The Gentile Christians on the other hand were not as aware of (at least at first as babes in Christ) of the Mosaic Laws that forbid certain practices when it came to dietary law; the elders in Jerusalem that participated in the Jerusalem Council when Paul and Barnabas reported what had been occurring among the Gentile converts gave them a few simple instructions for the Gentiles to follow - such as abstaining from food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, meat of strangled animals, and from eating blood. (Acts 15:20). These were things that the Jerusalem Council instructed Paul to inform the Gentile converts of, perhaps in a way to prevent them from offending their Jewish brothers dietary sensibilities, by not placing an obstacle of faith in the way of those who held to different understandings of our freedom in Christ. (This is a doctrine that we need to discuss at greater length when we arrive at that chapter later in the letter to the Romans.)

Further, others have suggested that Paul wrote this letter being unsure of his future as he faced the possibility of persecution in Jerusalem when he returned there to deliver his gifts to the brothers in need. This letter being this in-depth would provide a church or a group of people with the doctrines that Paul had taught throughout his ministry, so that should something to happen to him, this would provide the foundation of his teaching of the gospel message that another could pick up, study, and carry on his ministry where he left off.

For whatever reason(s) he wrote this letter, it was written and is beautifully preserved for those of us 20 centuries later to read and learn from, to carry on his ministry after he has long since gone on to his reward in heaven with the Father. Let us explore the depths of Romans together as we seek to better understand the mind of Paul as he wrote this, and as he provides us an insight into the gospel as preached shortly after the death and resurrection of our Lord to a world that is not too much unlike ours in its religious pluralistic makeup. May we be as Paul in that we would not be ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.