Paul’s epistle to the Romans stands arguably as the apex of Pauline thought. It is the longest letter in the Pauline corpus. In addition, it is his most theologically erudite and pastorally applicable set of teachings about faith in Jesus Christ. It is a letter that has had a monumental impact in the history of Christian thought. Before we can get into the text, there are several introductory matters that we have to address.1
The Story of the Roman Christians
We do not know precisely when Christianity came to Rome. We are told by Luke that many Jews and proselytes from Rome were present on the day of Pentecost, and they may have returned to Rome around AD 30/31 sporting a newfound faith borne of an encounter with Jesus’ followers and excited by new spiritual experiences (Acts 2:10 – 11). Otherwise, Suetonius reports that Claudius expelled the Jews around AD 49 because they were constantly rioting about a certain figure called “Chrestus,” a probable Latinism for “Christ” (Suetonius, Claudius 25.2).2 This corroborates Luke’s account of Priscilla and Aquila being forced out of Italy by Claudius’s edict and arriving in Corinth, where they met Paul in AD 50/51 (Acts 18:2). The only other concrete piece of evidence we have is that the three men who delivered a letter from the church in Rome to the church in Corinth in AD 95 are described as “old men” who had been “blameless” since youth, and therefore probably had been believers since their childhood in the 30s or 40s (1 Clem 63.3; 65.1). Given this data, we can presumptively date a Christian presence in Rome no later than the early AD 40s.
In terms of how Christianity came to Rome, again, we simply do not know for certain. Probably correct is the fourth-century commentator Ambrosiaster, who claimed that “the Romans embraced the faith according to the Jewish rite,” which is to say that Christianity entered Rome via the Jewish synagogues. There were probably multiple streams of entry of the faith into the Roman synagogues as Christianity was carried by Jewish pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, Jewish immigrants from the east, travelling merchants, and especially the slave trade. Soon, it seems, the Christian faith was transmitted to Gentiles, since by the time Paul writes to them he assumes a significant Gentile audience (see Rom 1:5 – 6, 13; 11:13; 15:15 – 16). Debates about the Messiah and rivalry for the adherence of the growing number of God-fearers and proselytes joining this messianic group led to violent confrontations within the Jewish communities of Rome. The result of the tumults was Claudius’s expulsion of many Jews from Rome, including Jewish Christian leaders like Priscilla and Aquila.3
The most meticulous study of Christian origins in Rome has been undertaken by Peter Lampe. After combing through literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidences, Lampe concludes that Christianity took root and flourished in the poorest and overcrowded districts of Rome, most probably the Trastevere and the Appian Way outside of the Porta Capena, and perhaps also the Aventine Hill and Mars Field. Furthermore, given the prevalence of slave names in the greetings in Romans 16:3 – 16, he argues that a large number of the Roman Christians were either slaves or freedman, with many drawn from the ranks of Jewish households like “Aristobulus” and “Herodion” (16:11 – 12). So Christianity may well have begun in Rome as a movement among Jewish Christian slaves and ex-slaves and soon attracted increasing numbers of God-fearers to its ranks.4
Paul probably acquired knowledge of the recent history of the Roman churches and awareness of their ethnic diversity through colleagues like Priscilla and Aquila, who had resided in Rome for a time. Several observations about the Roman Christians can be gleaned from the letter itself. To begin with, Paul’s implied audience is comprised of Gentiles (Rom 1:5 – 6, 13; 11:13; 16:6 – 15) who know the gospel, since Paul quotes traditional material that he expects them to be familiar with (1:3 – 4, 3:22 – 25; 4:25; 6:17; 10:9 – 11; 15:15). Reports of their faith and obedience have extended to the east (1:8, 16:19), as has their adherence to a recognizable pattern of teaching (6:17; 16:17). They know the Jewish law or “Torah” probably as former God-fearers and proselytes (7:1). The Romans are full of goodness and knowledge and are able to instruct one another (15:14 – 15). Paul expects a positive reception from them when he arrives (15:22 – 24, 28 – 29). He knows, directly and indirectly, some twenty-six people in Rome (16:3 – 16).
In regard to the situation in Rome to which Paul is writing, one gets the impression from the letter that Paul is addressing a church that is factionalized along ethnic lines. According to Romans 16:3 – 5, it appears that many Jewish Christians returned to Rome after Claudius’s death in AD 54 when his edict was rescinded. The six-year interval between 49 and 54 AD meant that Christianity began to grow in Rome with increasing number of Gentile converts and without the leadership or patronage of Jewish Christian leaders. By the time that Paul wrote his greetings, only a minority of the believers there were identifiable as Jewish Christians (Priscila and Aquila [16:3 – 5], Mary [16:6], Andronicus and Junia [16:7], household of Aristobulus [16:10], and Herodion [16:11]). Moreover, during this period Christianity probably moved its social center of gravity away from the Jewish communities and into house churches, tenement churches, or meeting places in workshops in the poorer suburbs of Rome. If Romans 9 – 11 and 14 – 15 are illustrative of the Roman context, Paul wrote to the Roman Gentiles after the return of the Jewish Christian exiles to Rome when rifts were beginning to open up between different factions.
Furthermore, although “Christianity” was perceived as an intra-Jewish sect in the 50s, by the time of Nero’s persecution against Christ-believers in the mid-60s, it had become possible to differentiate “Jews” from “Christians.” According to later tradition, it was during Nero’s persecution that Paul and Peter were probably martyred. Thus, Paul was writing to the Roman churches during a time of ethnic flux when the ethnic make-up of the churches was shifting toward a Gentile majority, bringing with it cultural and theological points of contention. What is arguably implicit is that Paul thinks that the Romans have heard rumours that he is antinomian on morality (Rom 3:7 – 8; 6:1) and supersessionist about Israel with the church effectively replacing Israel (9:1 – 5), the very things that Jewish communities were most affronted by and formed part of Paul’s infamous reputation (see Acts 20:20 – 21; 28:17; cf. Jas 2:14 – 26).
Personally, I wonder if some Jewish Christians and conservative Gentile Christians in Rome harbored reservations about Paul because of this reputation. I wonder too if some Gentile Christians had heard of these rumours, wholeheartedly embraced that view of Paul, and even appealed to a caricature of Paul to justify their own disregard for Torah and denigration of Israel. Paul, then, does not want misconceptions of his teaching used as a stick to bash Jewish Christians. A scenario along those lines corresponds with Paul’s knowledge of divisions based on matters related to whether the Torah was still binding on believers (Rom 14:1 – 15:13). This explains why across the letter Paul walks a tight rope between affirming the Torah’s goodness as well as the termination of its jurisdiction over believers.
We will explore the purpose(s) of Romans below, but for now it suffices to say that the situation in Rome, as far as we can reconstruct it, seems to assume that some kind of friction between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians has developed. The issues could have been manifold and included in-house debates over Torah, leadership tensions caused by the expulsion and return of Jewish Christians to Rome, and divisions fostered by ethnic prejudices. Paul shows genuine concern that the Roman house churches might splinter along ethnic or theological lines. In light of that, Paul wants to work for the unity of the Roman churches by binding them together around the gospel and his vision of the church as the multi-ethnic people of God. That way Paul can return to Jerusalem with a unified Roman church behind him, and a unified Roman church is more likely to be able to support his future missionary work in Spain. Given this proposal, I invite you, as you read through Romans, to imagine what it would be like for a group of Gentile Christians meeting in a cramped apartment (called an insula) in the impoverished parts of the Trastevere (i.e., a suburb in Rome), led by a fictitious leather worker named Rufus (cf. Rom 16:13), to read over this letter in that setting. Imagine Paul’s letter to the Romans as viewed through the eyes of Roman Gentiles.
The Story of Paul Writing to the Romans
Paul wrote Romans after finishing an extensive period of ministry to Gentiles in the eastern part of the Mediterranean (Rom 15:15 – 23). His immediate plans were to visit Jerusalem in order to deliver the collection taken up from the Gentile churches. Thereafter, he intended to visit Rome (15:24, 28 – 29, 32) as he had longed to do (1:13; 15:22 – 23) and then proceed west to Spain (15:24, 28).
We can identify Paul’s location from his commendation of his delegate Phoebe, who is a “deacon/servant” of the church in Cenchreae (Rom 16:1), and the list of persons who also send their greetings like Erastus (see Acts 19:22; 2 Tim 4:20) suggests a provenance from the Corinthian isthmus (Rom 16:21 – 23). This data can be correlated with Luke’s account in Acts, which depicts Paul as leaving Macedonia and staying in Greece for three months before setting out for Troas with the collection and a cohort of delegates (Acts 20:1 – 5). It is during this three-month stay in Corinth, as he reflected on his immediate journey to Jerusalem and a future expedition to Spain, that he turned his mind to the Romans and dispatched Phoebe with his communication to them.
In other letters, Paul was usually responding to some crisis or urgent need. According to Dunn, however, Paul wrote Romans in different circumstances:
In this case, in contrast, in the relative leisure and calm of Corinth, at the close of his successful missioning in the Aegean area, he had been able to work through in considerable detail the content and character of the gospel which had been his principal message as “apostle to the Gentiles” — and not simply for his own self-satisfaction, or even necessarily for an immediate purpose. It was rather that the challenges which had surfaced again and again in his mission and in his attempts to maintain positive relations with the home churches in Judea and Antioch had repeatedly been occasioned by the difficulties of reconciling the gospel of a Jewish Messiah with a vocation to preach this Messiah among the Gentiles. The composition of Romans gave him the opportunity to work these issues through as thoroughly as we have now seen. But having done this, there were still specific issues of which he knew in Rome, and which needed to be addressed, some a direct expression of the tensions he had laid bare particularly in his third telling of the gospel’s story [i.e., Romans 12 – 15].5
Thus, Romans was written at a transitionary point in Paul’s career when he had momentary respite and was at a geographical and intellectual juncture where it was time to reflect on the past and to look ahead to the future.
Dating any event in Paul’s career is always difficult and usually inexact. We can safely date the letter after Claudius’s edict in AD 49 (Acts 18:2), after Gallio became proconsul of Achaia in AD 51 (18:12), and after the death of Claudius in AD 54, when his edict was rescinded and Jewish Christians like Priscilla and Aquila were able to return to Rome (Acts 16:3 – 5). We are probably looking at a date post AD 55, when Paul is in Corinth on a three-month stay (20:2 – 3) and is about to set sail for Jerusalem (Rom 15:25 – 32). It could have been written as late as AD 59, especially if Paul’s remark about taxes in Romans 13:6 – 7 reflects the public unrest created by the dubious practices of tax farmers that Nero clamped down on through several tax reforms in AD 58.6 Thus, given a post-55 date and the likelihood that Paul arrived in Rome around AD 59/60, we can date Romans around AD 56/57.7
Why Did Paul Write Romans?
A multiplicity of proposals for the purpose of Romans have been suggested.8
1. A theological treatise. The Muratorian Canon regarded Romans as written “concerning the plan of the Scriptures showing that their foundation is Christ.” Among the Reformers, Luther said in his preface to Romans that Paul “wanted to compose a summary of the whole of Christian and evangelical teaching which would also be an introduction to the whole Old Testament.”9 Luther’s junior colleague, Philip Melanchthon, in his Loci Communes Theologici, labeled Romans a “compendium of Christian doctrine.” John Calvin regarded the letter as a systematic exposition of justification by faith.10 Not long ago, J. C. Beker suggested that Romans is “dogmatics in outline,” not a timeless theological product but a “treatise.”11 More recently Douglas Campbell has claimed that, in Romans 5 – 8 at least, Paul “provisionally articulates a systematic theology.”12
While Romans is Paul’s most theologically loaded and logically coherent exposition of the Christian faith, it is problematic to regard it as a theological treatise for at least two reasons: (a) It fails to say much about key topics such as the Holy Spirit, church, sacraments, and eschatology. (b) Paul’s letters were always situational, and Romans is no exception as evidenced by his greetings (1:1 – 15) and account of his missionary intentions (15:14 – 16:27).
2. A summary of Pauline teaching. Others suppose that Romans is a précis of Paul’s teaching in the light of disputes that he had in Antioch, Galatia, and Corinth. That is why there are so many connections between Romans and Paul’s other letters. For instance, there are similarities with Galatians and Romans 1 – 4 concerning justification. There are also similarities between 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14 – 15 concerning disputed matters of food and fellowship. Günther Bornkamm proposed that Romans was Paul’s “Last Will and Testament,” a summation of his teaching as well as a rehearsal for the defense of his ministry as he prepared to go to Jerusalem to deliver the collection.13 There is something right about this suggestion since Romans indeed reflects a mature theology of the Pauline mission.14 James Dunn comments:
Paul’s primary objective . . . was to think through his gospel in the light of the controversies which it had occasioned and to use the calm of Corinth to set out both his gospel itself and its ramifications in writing with a fullness of exposition which the previous trials and tribulations had made impossible and which would have been impossible to sustain in a single oral presentation.15
The problem with this summary view is: (a) It does not take into account the differences between Romans and the other Pauline letters. For a start, Paul’s tone in discussing the law is very different from Galatians. Likewise, Paul’s exhorations to the weak in Romans 14 cover the issues of meat, sacred days, and wine, which is not the same issue as idol-food as discussed in 1 Corinthians 8. (b) There is also a lot of material in Romans that does not appear in the other letters, such as the analogy of the olive tree (Rom 11:13 – 31) and his instructions about taxes and government (13:1 – 7). These cannot be explained as a summary of Paul’s teaching or form the basis for his notes in a defense of his apostolate in Jerusalem. While Romans is undoubtedly a distillation of his missional theology, it still contains a specificity that cannot be accounted for by his reflections on his teaching or by his preparations to defend himself in Jerusalem.
3. A letter soliciting support for the Pauline mission. Paul says explicitly in the letter that he intends to travel west to Spain, and he evidently needed the support of the Roman churches for this journey (Rom 15:24 – 28). In light of that, several scholars have proposed that Paul wrote the letter principally to solicit the support of the Roman congregations for his future evangelistic efforts in Spain.16 Luke Timothy Johnson goes so far as to call Romans, in essence, a fund-raising letter.17
The problems here are as follows: (a) Would such an elaborate and lengthy letter be required to solicit funds? In Philippians, Paul renews the bonds of fraternity with the audience and asks them to provide further financial assistance to him, but Philipppians is nowhere near as dense or lengthy as Romans. Granted, in order to get the support of the Roman churches, Paul would have to lay out his gospel at length to clarify his views, thus accounting for Romans 1 – 8. But such a purpose hardly warrants the inclusion of Romans 9 – 11, which deals with the problem of Israel’s rejection of the gospel and the Gentiles’ acceptance of it. (b) Neither does this theory require the exhortations in Romans 12 – 15, which appear to have a specific context in mind. The latter half of Romans must be explained by circumstances exterior to Paul’s own situation. Most likely, Paul writes such things because he has caught wind of events transpiring in Rome that he wishes to address before he arrives there. So I think “yes” to a missionary purpose, but there is something else going on in Rome that occasions Paul’s letter and its specific construction, apology, and exhortations.
4. A letter to bring unity to the Roman churches. Many have asserted that Paul wrote Romans in order bring the fractured groups among the Roman churches together. Some perceive Paul in Romans 9 – 11 urging Gentile Christians not to imitate the anti-Judaism of Roman cultural elites, and some regard Paul as trying in Romans 14 – 15 to foster reconciliation between the “strong” and the “weak.”18 A landmark study by Wolfgang Wiefel argued that the ban on Jewish assemblies and the expulsion of the Jews from Rome under Claudius significantly impacted the shape of Christianity in Rome between AD 49 and 54. In the intervening years, the Christian movement became largely separated from the synagogues and developed a mostly Gentile leadership among house churches. The return of the Jewish Christians created internal tensions over the Jewish law and leadership of the Gentile-majority house churches. So, Paul wrote Romans to effect reconciliation between them. According to Wiefel, the situation behind the letter is that it was written to “assist the Gentile Christian majority, who are the primary addressees of the letter, to live together with the Jewish Christians in one congregation, thereby putting an end to their quarrels about status.”19 This vacuum theory has been popular and become the predominating view in scholarship.20 The strengths of this view are that it identifies a plausible social context for the content in Romans 9 – 15 and makes sense of the emotive exhortations that appear at the end, such as Paul’s concern that his audience pursue the things of peace (14:19) and accept one another as Christ accepted them (15:7).
There are, however, a few problems that plague this vacuum view. (a) We cannot be certain that the “weak” were Jewish Christians and the “strong” were Gentile Christians. Paul was a Jewish Christian who considers himself to be one of the “strong” (Rom 15:1), and similar language concerning the “weak” was used in a Gentile majority church in Corinth (1 Cor 8:7, 10). There could be Gentile Christians with strong scruples about food, drink, and idolatry, just as there could be Jewish Christians who became liberal in such matters. (b) The significance of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome in AD 49 is potentially overestimated. For a start, Paul nowhere mentions the expulsion even implicitly in the letter. It is also more likely that the ring leaders or those few synagogues known to be tumultuous were penalized with expulsion, rather than exiling every single one of the 50,000-plus Jews in Rome, many of whom were Roman citizens.21
Though the Gentile Christians could have become slightly more independent in the absence of their Jewish-Christian colleagues, we have no firm reason to believe that Christianity became essentially Gentilized in the years immediately following Claudius’s edict of expulsion. According to Peter Oaks, while Romans 14 – 15 exhibits signs of tension between house churches, issues that may relate to the Jewish heritage of its members, to say that the tension is a direct result of the return of Jewish Christians to Rome who had been expelled by Claudius is not demanded since other scenarios can account for this tension.22 In fact, some scholars think that the entire letter is meant for digestion within Gentile churches in Rome.23 Thus, the notion of a Jewish vacuum followed by a Gentile majority thereafter in the Roman churches is more assumed than demonstrable.24
5. An eclectic proposal. I suspect the reasons for Romans are multiple and complex. Moreover, we would be wise to consider that Paul may have had more than one purpose in mind when he wrote the letter.25
Paul’s primary aim is to garner the support of the Roman Christians for his planned journey to Spain as per option 3, yet he also wants to return to Jerusalem to deliver the collection with all of the Gentile churches firmly behind him as the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom 1:13; 15:24 – 25). Paul writes to the Roman churches, the Gentile wing in particular — but knowing full well that Jewish Christian critics and supporters in the city will come across the letter as well — to formally introduce himself and his ministry to them. However, if Paul is to succeed in winning their support and service, he has two implied tasks.
First, he must win them over to his account of the gospel if they are to support his projected missionary plans (Rom 1:9, 15 – 16; 2:16; 15:15 – 21; 16:25).26 Schreiner comments: “He knew that such support would not be forthcoming unless they had a firm grasp of the Pauline gospel. Thus he articulated his gospel in some detail in the letter so that the Romans would comprehend the basics of his gospel and so that they could reply to critics who distorted what Paul taught.”27 Paul does that by setting out his gospel at theological depth in order to better “establish” them in the faith (1:11, 16; 15:15; 16:25). Romans is a presentation of Paul’s gospel explaining how it unveils God’s saving righteousness (1:16), including its ability to bring people into moral transformation (3:5 – 8; 6:1 – 23; 14:16), its distinctiveness from the Judaism of the Pharisees (9:33 – 10:4), combined with continuity with the ancient Israelite religion (9:4 – 5; 11:25 – 32), and conformity to the pattern of Scripture (1:2; 3:21; 9:6; 15:8 – 12). In particular, Paul strives to show that his gospel is prefigured by the Torah (1:17; 3:21), is Torah-affirming (3:31; 7:12, 14; 13:8 – 10), and takes up the eschatological vision of the Torah for saving and unifying Jews and Gentiles in God’s people (10:5 – 6; 15:10).28 Paul deploys an impressive array of scriptural and rhetorical arguments to prove that his gospel is God-honoring, Christ-centered, and valid for both Jews and Gentiles. Thus, from Paul’s side, the goal of his exposition is to show that he is a divinely accredited apostle who faithfully proclaims the Jewish gospel about Israel’s Messiah to the nations.
A second implied task is some preventive pastoral care. While the expulsion of Jewish Christians under Claudius can be overstated in significance, its impact on Christ-believers in Rome would hardly have been neglible. The expulsion must have had huge implications for the structure and membership of the Roman churches even if they did not suddenly evolve into an instant Gentile majority. Likewise, the return of the Jewish Christians to Rome after Claudius’s death would have been equally complicated and messy as to how relations between the resident believers and former exiles would resume. Furthermore, if it is true that the Roman churches’ faith had been reported over the whole world (Rom 1:8), then the letter must be dealing with issues that were “on the front burner,” as it were, in Rome.29 It seems that Paul well knows the problems that the churches in Rome were facing. This is principally the fragmentation, real or potential, of the Roman house churches over obedience to the Torah on issues that symbolize visible loyalty to the Jewish way of life.
Then there is also the need for a strategy to assist them in negotiating the hazards of living in a pagan society (Romans 12 – 13). Paul also is compelled to counter preemptively some Gentile Christians who were tempted to imitate the rancorous anti-Judaism of Roman cultural elites (Romans 9; 11). If unity is the aim, then Paul wisely expounds the interlocking nature of Jewish and Gentile missions (1:16; 10:14 – 21; 11:13 – 33; 15:8 – 9, 27) and exposits God’s faithfulness to Israel and his impartiality toward Jews and Greeks in Jesus Christ (Romans 1 – 4; 9 – 10; 14:9 – 10). This setting also accounts for a key theological emphasis of the letter: explaining how God, in the Messiah, welcomes Gentiles into his people, and how believing Jews and Gentiles in the Messiah should equally welcome one another (4:16; 5:8 – 11; 15:6 – 7). Thus, from the Romans’ side, Paul’s goal is to foster a confederation of ethnically diverse house churches in Rome who constitute the renewed people of God in the new covenant age.
In brief, Romans is a word of exhortation,30 a masterpiece of missional theology, culturally savvy apologetics, christological exegesis, pastoral care, theological exposition, and artful rhetoric — all designed to win over the audience to Paul’s gospel, to support his mission in Spain, to draw Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome closer together, to strengthen them in the faith despite the perils of Roman culture, and to encourage his audience to identify with the apostle to the Gentiles as he goes to Jerusalem.
The Story “in” Paul’s Letter to the Romans
If we had to summarize what Romans is all about, we could condense it down to this: God is creating out of Jews and Gentiles a people to praise him. Paul regards the gospel as the proclamation that Israel’s long-anticipated release and restoration is happening and is magnetically drawing the Gentiles into its luminous display of divine mercy. For it is by redeeming Israel that God has acted also to reconcile the Gentiles, and God has determined to include Jews and Gentiles in the one people of God, on the same basis: faith in Jesus.31
We might say that Romans 1 – 4 is the soteriological citadel, where Paul narrates the gospel of salvation, explaining how believers shift from wrath to righteousness, how the Torah provides the scaffolding for the future building but is not part of its permanent structure. The citadel unveils God’s prized work of a renewed Abrahamic family sharing in one faith in one God by the Messiah’s death and resurrection.32 Then, Romans 5 – 8 is the cosmic cathedral, adorned with a mixture of religious artwork and echoing with choral music, which describes how believers have transferred from the reign of sin and death into the lordship of Jesus. The ambience of the cathedral is supplied by none other than the gift of the Spirit, which comes as a power to resist the flesh. Next, Romans 9 – 11 might be likened to an olive garden chapel, where believers can celebrate Israel’s privileges, lament Israel’s past failures, speak prayerfully into Israel’s current state, and hold out an olive branch of hope for Israel’s future. Thereafter, 12:1 – 15:13 is Christ College, the school of faith, where love and hope are on the syllabus, the Messiah’s story is lived out in their own lives, and the church is prepared to be a people ready to worship God in faithfulness, truth, and glory. Finally, 15:14 – 16:27 is the missionary panel, where Paul locates his own apostolic labors in the domain of God’s grand purposes, and he calls on believers in all places to support God’s people in God’s work for them.
The story of Romans obviously then stands within the larger biblical story: the story of creation fallen and creation renewed, men and women estranged in sin and then reconciled in Christ, Israel’s tragic misstep before a redemptive future, Gentile foreigners becoming adopted heirs of Israel’s God, and God’s people always rejoicing in the promises and provision of their Lord and Savior. To be more precise, Romans is part of the biblical story of the world condemned in Adam (1:18 – 32; 5:12 – 21), Israel’s covenantal call to herald God’s reign to the nations, let down by the fact that Israel too is entrenched in Adam (2:1 – 3:20; 9:6 – 10:21), and the Messiah as the goal of God’s redemptive purposes to create a redeemed family for Abraham (4:1 – 25; 10:4; 15:7 – 13). The story narrated in Romans is that in the Messiah, God has been faithful to Israel and been merciful to the nations, exactly as Scripture said he would be. God’s dealings with Israel and the Gentiles are not two separate or conflicting stories, but part of the one and same story climaxing in Jesus.
It is no surprise, then, that Paul’s letter to the Romans pivots on biblical themes like God’s righteousness, where this “righteousness” is synonymous with God’s saving action (see Isaiah 51 and Psalm 51). This righteousness is cognate to God’s truthfulness and faithfulness, which comes to Israel as the saving event of the Messiah’s death and resurrection. It is a righteousness that will put the whole world to rights and rightens believers within that world on the basis of faith ahead of the final judgment (see Rom 1:17; 2:16; 3:21 – 26; 10:3).
Then there is the Spirit, the life-giving power of God, leading and guiding God’s people into true covenant righteousness. One of the blessings of the new covenant that the prophets had spoken about was that God would one day pour out his Spirit in a whole new way, which would be proof that God’s long-awaited day of deliverance had finally come (see Ezek 36:26 – 27; 37:14; Joel 2:27 – 28). The shocking thing is that this happened not to the politically powerful nor to the religiously scrupulous, but to the followers of Jesus, including Gentiles. The Spirit came upon a people who did not have the usual badges of belonging to God, such as circumcision, but who had experienced a circumcision of the heart, that is, faith in Israel’s God and inner renewal (see Rom 2:25 – 29). It was the Spirit who would lead them in their struggle against the flesh and give them hope in the face of suffering (Rom 8:1 – 27).
Next we have to say that the theme of “Israel” is central to Paul’s story of salvation. Paul is crystal clear about the goodness of Israel’s inherited privileges (Rom 3:1 – 5; 9:1 – 5) and the inviolability of Israel’s election (11:29). According to Scripture, Israel was the elect nation, chosen by God and put into the world to herald God’s kingly power and to praise his name to the nations (see Exod 19:5 – 6; Isa 41:8; 44:1). While God’s story included Israel, it was not strictly about Israel, as God’s purposes extended back to the promises given to the patriarchs about blessing the nations through Abraham’s seed. When that story is worked out in Romans, it means that salvation is based on grace and received by faith rather than restricted to ethnic kinship and or appropriated by performing deeds of the Torah (see Rom 3:27 – 31; 4:9 – 17; 10:1 – 4).
And we can hardly forget the Messiah as the key character in the story of Romans. While Romans does not have a christological text as extravagant as Philippians 2:5 – 11 or Colossians 1:15 – 20, even so, there is a strong affirmation of Jesus’ messianic identity (Rom 1:3 – 4; 15:7 – 8), with an implicit reference to the incarnation (8:3) and later an explicit one (see 9:5). In Romans, Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, a new Adam, the redeemer of Israel, and rescuer of Gentiles.
So all in all, God with his gift of righteousness, the Spirit, Israel, and Messiah are vital characters in the biblical story of how God reveals his salvation to both Israel and the nations. Romans drips with citations and allusions to Scripture because Paul takes up these biblical themes and shows that they have their fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Delving into Romans also compels us to read the Old Testament with a hermeneutical lens which identifies Jesus as the centerpiece of Israel’s redemptive history. Jesus is the “goal” or “climax” of Israel’s law (Rom 10:4) so that God’s purposes for Israel must be interpreted in light of him (see Acts 13:32 – 33; 2 Cor 1:20). The key verses that unlock this story of promise and fulfillment for us are the dramatic point in the letter where Paul says: “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Rom 15:8 – 9). God’s action in Jesus does not set aside all that was said to Israel; rather, it confirms it and proves that God was faithful.
Yet we must not forget that God is faithful to all of his promises, those given to Israel and those made to the patriarchs, which is why God acted in his Messiah to bring the Gentiles to praise his name and to glorify him by forgiving their sins and sending the Spirit into their hearts. That is the scriptural story that Paul tethers to his gospel — a gospel promised beforehand in the prophets and fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans is then perfectly suited, as Martin Luther saw, to being a Christian introduction to the Old Testament. In other words, Romans shows us that the Old Testament must be read as a Jesus-story that points toward the divine saving action executed in God’s messianic deliverer.
1. See further introductions to Romans in Michael F. Bird, “The Letter to the Romans,” in All Things to All Cultures: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (eds. M. Harding and A. Nobbs; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 177 – 204; and Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within Its Cultural Contexts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 321 – 35.
2. Tacitus (Annals 15.44) continued the misspelling of the name with “Chrestianos” for “Christians.” Confusion over the name Christos/Chrestus continued even into the second century as evidenced by Tertullian, Apology 3 and Justin Martyr, Apology 1.4.
3. The plausibility of Suetonius’s account is enhanced when we remember that similar such tumults over messianic faith occurred in Jerusalem (Acts 6:9 – 15), Pisidian Antioch (13:45, 50), Iconium (14:2, 5), Lystra (14:19), and Corinth (18:12 – 17).
4. Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).
5. James D. G Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem (CITM 2; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 919 (emphases original).
6. As reported by Tacitus, Annals 13.50 – 51, and Suetonius, Nero 10.
7. Cf. similarly Dunn, Romans, 1:xliii; idem, Beginning from Jerusalem, 512; Jewett, Romans, 18 – 21; Andria, Romans, 2.
8. See esp. Paul Minear, The Obedience of Faith: The Purposes of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (London: SCM, 1979); Karl P. Donfried, ed., The Romans Debate (rev. ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991); A. J. M. Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); L. Ann Jervis, The Purpose of Romans: A Comparative Letter Structure Investigation (JSNTSup 55; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); James C. Miller, The Obedience of Faith, The Eschatological People of God, and the Purpose of Romans (SBLDS 177; Atlanta: SBL, 2000); Jewett, Romans, 80 – 91; A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007); Richard L. Longenecker, Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 43 – 51, 94 – 166.
9. Martin Luther, “Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans,” Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html.
10. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries: Romans-Galatians (Wilmington, DE: Associated Publishing, n.d.), 12:1333.
11. J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 77.
12. Douglas A. Campbell, “Christ and the Church in Paul: A ‘Post-New Perspective’ Account,” in Four Views on the Apostle Paul (ed. M. F. Bird; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 141.
13. Günther Bornkamm, “The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament,” in The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 16 – 28. Jacob Jervell (“The Letter to Jerusalem,” in The Romans Debate, 53 – 64) also emphasizes the role of Romans as a preparation for Paul’s speech in Jerusalem.
14. N. A. Dahl, “The Missionary Theology in the Epistle to the Romans,” in Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), 70 – 94.
15. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 867.
16. W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (trans. H. C. Kee; Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), 312 – 13.
17. Johnson, Romans, 6 – 9.
18. Wolfgang Wiefel, “The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity,” in The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 85 – 101; Dunn, Romans, 1:lvi – lviii; idem, Beginning from Jerusalem, 873 – 74; Wright, “Romans,” 10:406 – 8; J. P. Sampley, “The Weak and the Strong: Paul’s Careful and Crafty Rhetorical Strategy in Romans 14:1 – 15:13,” in The Social World of the First Christians (ed. L. M. White and L. Yarbrough; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 40 – 52; W. L. Lane, “Social Perspectives on Roman Christianity during the Formative Years from Nero to Nerva,” in Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (ed. K. P. Donfried and P. Richardson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 196 – 244 (esp. 199 – 202); Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 133.
19. Wiefel, “Jewish Community in Ancient Rome,” 96.
20. W. B. Russell, “An Alternative Suggestion for the Purpose of Romans,” BSac 45 (1988): 174 – 84; J. C. Walters, Ethnic Issues in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Changing Self-Definition in Earliest Roman Christianity (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993); Francis Watson, “The Two Roman Congregations: Romans 14:1 – 15:13,” in The Romans Debate (ed. K.P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 203 – 15; idem, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 163 – 91.
21. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 15.
22. Peter Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul’s Letter at Ground Level (London: SPCK, 2009), 74 – 75.
23. A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 202, 263 – 64 (a Gentile audience for Romans is also advocated by Paul Achtemeier, Neil Elliott, Stanley Stowers, and Lloyd Gaston, to name a few). The problem with Das’s (Romans Debate, 262) proposal is that he thinks the persons greeted in Romans 16:1 – 16 were not part of the Roman churches Paul is writing to.
24. Jerome Murphy O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 333; J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul “in Concert” in the Letter to the Romans (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 33 – 34; John M. G. Barclay, “Is It Good News That God Is Impartial? A Response to Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary,” JSNT 31 (2008): 91 – 94; Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans, 102 – 6.
25. Cranfield, Romans, 2:815; Dunn, Romans, 1:lv; Wedderburn, Reasons for Romans, 5 – 6; Schreiner, Romans, 19; Longenecker, Introducing Romans, 157 – 60.
26. Cranfield, Romans, 2:823; Moo, Romans, 29 – 30; Schreiner, Romans, 20 – 23, 774; Dunn, Romans, 2.856.
27. Schreiner, Romans, 774.
28. Mark Reasoner, The Strong and the Weak: Romans 14.1 – 15.13 in Context (SNTSMS 103; Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 1999), 234.
29. Ibid., 221.
30. David E. Aune, “Romans as a Logos Protreptikos,” in The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 278 – 96.
31. Wagner, Heralds of the Good News, 357.
32. I owe this image of Romans 1 – 4 as a citadel to Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 313.