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WorkPaul the Apostle

Epistle to the Romans

Paul introduces himself to a church he had never seen, arguing that Jew and Gentile are put right with God in the same way.

by Paul the Apostle36 passages held

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Original title
Πρὸς Ῥωμαίους
First published
(aged 52)
Original language
Greek

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Overview

Paul wrote to the Christians of Rome before he had ever met them. He was in Corinth, most likely in 56–57 (estimates run from late 55 to 57), about to carry money collected in his Greek congregations to the poor of the church in Jerusalem, and he hoped afterwards to travel on through Rome to Spain. He dictated the letter to a scribe, Tertius, who adds a greeting of his own near the end. Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, Corinth's port, whom Paul commends to the Romans, probably carried it. The longest of his letters is therefore also an introduction: the case for his message, set out for strangers whose help he needed, and an answer to critics who said his teaching made sin harmless. Its claim is that Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles) stand in the same place before God. All have failed, and all are put right in the same way, through pístis, "faith" or "trust", in what God did in Christ, not by doing the works the Jewish law requires. Abraham is the witness: he trusted, and was counted righteous, before he was circumcised. From there the letter goes into the divided self that knows the law and cannot keep it, and then into the question that weighs on Paul most: if this is true, what of Israel, which mostly refused his message? Three chapters answer that God has not abandoned his people. The letter's later readers include Augustine, who in a garden in Milan in 386 opened it at chapter 13 and gave up his old life; Luther, who lectured on it in 1515–16 and in his preface of 1522 called it the purest gospel; John Wesley, who heard Luther's preface to it read in London in 1738, an evening often taken as the beginning of Methodism; and Karl Barth, a Swiss village pastor whose commentary of 1919 changed twentieth-century theology. Since E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), many scholars read it less as a doctrine of individual guilt than as an argument about how Jews and Gentiles become one people. The text given here is the King James Version (1611), translated from the Greek, with the verse numbers removed and the chapters kept.

Key concepts

What does 'justified' mean in Romans?

Declared in the right before God, the way a judge acquits someone. Paul's claim is that God does this freely, as a gift, for anyone who trusts him, and not as payment for keeping the law. His boldest phrase is that God 'justifieth the ungodly': the verdict does not wait for a person to become good first, though a new life is meant to follow from it.

What are 'the works of the law' Paul says cannot save?

The deeds the Jewish law of Moses commands, from circumcision to the commandments. Paul says no one is put right by doing them, because the law shows sin up rather than removing it: 'by the law is the knowledge of sin'. Since the Reformation readers took this to mean good deeds in general; many scholars now stress the marks that set Jews apart, such as circumcision and food laws.

What do 'flesh' and 'Spirit' mean in Romans?

Two ways of living, not body against soul. 'Flesh' is human life turned in on itself and under the power of sin, which is why Paul can say that to be 'carnally minded is death'. 'Spirit' is God's own life given to believers, which leads them from within. The struggle Paul describes is between these two masters, not between having a body and wanting to escape it.

What is the 'Spirit of adoption'?

Paul's image for how believers become God's children: not born into the family but adopted into it, with full rights as heirs. The sign is that they call God 'Abba, Father', using the intimate Aramaic word a child uses. Adoption replaces the relation of a slave, who obeys out of fear, with that of a son or daughter, who belongs.

What is the 'remnant' in Romans?

The part of Israel that did trust, which Paul takes as proof that God has not cast off his people. His example is Elijah, who thought he alone was left, and was told that God had kept seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. In Paul's day, he says, there is likewise 'a remnant according to the election of grace', chosen by gift rather than by merit.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Put right by trust, Jew and Greek alike

If no one keeps God's law, Jew or Gentile, how can anyone stand right with God? Paul answers that standing cannot be earned, only received by trust.

Paul builds the case like an advocate. Gentiles worshipped images when creation showed them God plainly; Jews had the law and broke it, and whoever judges another condemns himself. So all have sinned and fall short. Then the turn: God puts people right freely, as a gift, through trust in what he did in Christ. Abraham is the proof, counted righteous while still uncircumcised. The law is not made void but established, and boasting is shut out for everyone alike.

  • faith
  • justification
  • grace
  • righteousness
  • law
  • idolatry
  • judgment
  • hypocrisy
  • conscience
  • revelation

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Sin, grace and a groaning creation

Why does someone who knows the good still do the evil they hate? Paul treats sin as a power that enslaves, and grace as a deliverance that reaches the whole creation.

Sin, for Paul, is less a list of misdeeds than a master. Through one man it entered the world, and death with it; the law, holy in itself, only exposes the slavery, so that the self wills the good and does the evil. Grace answers not with a better rule but with a new life, dying and rising with Christ. To critics who said this made sin harmless, he replies that the freed do not go back to their chains. Even creation groans, waiting to be set free.

  • sin
  • freedom
  • moral responsibility
  • moral transformation
  • salvation
  • hope
  • suffering

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Has God abandoned Israel?

Most of Paul's own people refused his message: has God's word failed? Three chapters wrestle with that question and refuse to give Israel up.

Paul writes of great sorrow for his kin. He argues first that God's choosing never ran by descent alone, Jacob preferred over Esau, the potter free over the clay; then that Israel stumbled so that the nations might come in; and last, with wild olive shoots grafted into a cultivated tree, that the Gentiles have no ground to boast, since the root bears them. The broken branches can be grafted back, and all Israel shall be saved. The section ends not in a solution but in praise of judgments past finding out.

  • religious inclusion
  • promise
  • providence
  • divine mercy
  • mission
  • scripture
  • justice

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A life offered: love as the fulfilling of the law

What does trust look like among neighbours, rulers and fellow believers who disagree? Love, Paul answers, which does what the law was after all along.

After eleven chapters of argument Paul turns to how to live, and calls it offering the body as a living sacrifice. Repay no one evil; leave vengeance to God and feed the hungry enemy. Be subject to the governing authorities and pay taxes. Owe nothing but love, which works no ill to a neighbour and so fulfils the law. Where believers split over food and holy days, the strong must not despise the weak, for whatever is not done in faith is sin.

  • love
  • community
  • humility
  • virtue ethics
  • obedience
  • prayer

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Within this work

passages held
36
distinct concepts
93
by passages held, corpus-wide
#701

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “faith” and “law”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 5 concepts, joined by 10 pairings. 36 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
faithlaw3
faithgrace2
faithsalvation2
gracelaw2
gracesalvation2
gracesin2
lawsin2
salvationsin2
faithsin1
lawsalvation1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 51 Epistles to the Thessalonians (Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Α΄ · Πρὸς Θεσσαλονικεῖς Β΄)

    One of his earliest surviving letters, paired with a second in his name whose authorship is disputed. Between them they hold most of what the letters say about the Lord's return.

     EN
  2. 53 Epistle to the Galatians (Πρὸς Γαλάτας)

    A letter of controversy, written in haste to churches he feared to lose. It holds his fullest account of his early years as an apostle and of his clash with Peter, and states in compressed form the case Romans later sets out at length.

     EN
  3. 55 Epistles to the Corinthians (Πρὸς Κορινθίους Α΄ · Πρὸς Κορινθίους Β΄)

    Not one letter but a correspondence: two of at least four letters Paul wrote to Corinth, the second possibly several joined together. They record his longest struggle with a single congregation he had founded.

     EN
  4. 57 Epistle to the Romans (Πρὸς Ῥωμαίους) you are here EN
  5. 62 Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους · Πρὸς Κολοσσαεῖς)

    The two letters on this shelf closest to each other in wording, and with Second Thessalonians the three whose authorship is disputed. They carry Paul's thought toward a teaching about the universal church.

     EN
  6. 62 Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon (Πρὸς Φιλιππησίους · Πρὸς Φιλήμονα)

    Prison letters, one to the congregation that supported him with money and one to a single household. Philemon is the only one of Paul's undisputed letters written chiefly to one person.

     EN
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