I am going to start a new series of videos, a devotional study through the book of Romans. We just started doing this on Wednesday nights, and I like the idea of continuing in the Word throughout the week and not just getting it one time. I was just talking to somebody about this last night: retaining the information. Sometimes when I hear something for the second time, it really helps reinforce the learning, whether I hear it from the same person, listen to the same book again, or hear the same topic from two different teachers. When I hear things again, it reinforces that learning for me, and that is what I want to do with this video series: reinforce what we are hearing on Wednesday nights. In our 1 Samuel series, we have been focusing on one main thought, one main theme from each chapter, almost treating it like a standalone sermon. Those videos have one driving point. But I am going to try something new with this series. Instead of one big idea, I am going to go verse by verse through the book of Romans for about ten minutes. I will shorten the video length on this series, go as far as I can in those ten minutes, end the video there, and pick up the next video wherever we left off. That is roughly the format we have been following on Wednesday nights, and it has been such a blessing. I have loved it on Wednesday nights, only we have been doing about thirty minutes rather than ten, so I do not know whether these videos will give more detail or less detail. But so far it has been such a rich study. It has only been four weeks, and we have made it up to chapter 1, verse 17. So it is not exactly a fast-moving study, but we are looking at every single verse, and sometimes every word of every verse. Man, it is an incredible book. I love it so much, and I am super excited to share it with you in this format. If you are new here, my name is Pastor Ryan Rench at Calvary Baptist Church. We just want to bring the Bible home, so that as you continue in the Word throughout the week, you are not only getting it at service times, not just on Sundays, but throughout the week too.
The Main Idea and the Author
In today’s video, I just want to cover the introduction to the book, giving a brief overview of where we are going and what the book looks like before actually diving into chapter 1. You see the notes up on the screen; I am going to make them a little bigger so they are easier to read, maybe even a little bigger than that. We have the main idea of the book. If you know the book of Romans, the main idea of the book is the gospel. When I was in college, my pastor, Brother Sam Davison, preached through Romans and called it “The Pure Gospel.” This book of Romans is from the apostle Paul. Down in verse 7 he says, “To all that be in Rome,” so this is from an apostle to a church in Rome that he has never met. Paul was Saul of Tarsus. Just in my Bible reading this morning, I started the book of Acts. Saul turns from being the one persecuting the church, persecuting Christians, to becoming an advocate for Christians. He becomes an apostle, a sent one, to go tell the message of Jesus Christ. We will come back to the apostle Paul in a little bit.
The Church at Rome
Here is this letter to Rome, and the Bible says in Acts 18:1-2: “After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them.” After this departure from Rome, this group of believers, which was likely predominantly Jewish, had to go away when the Jews were expelled. Then, after they returned, it seems we see later in the book of Romans some infighting, a few issues going on between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. There was about a five-year gap after the decree of Claudius, and now the Jews are returning and finding a largely Gentile church with Gentile practices. The book of Romans is a look at the gospel that says, “Look, we have got to be united around the truth of the pure gospel. This is what unites God’s people.” So in Romans you see the clearest gospel presentation, the clearest teaching on the gospel. What Paul wanted was a hub there from which he could go on into Spain. Romans 15:24: “Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.” And down in verse 28, the same thing: “When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.” So this is one of the most incredible treatises on the gospel, and he is saying, “Look, I want Rome to be a hub for me, a base, so that I can go onward into Spain.”
There is a funny old western movie we watched growing up where a cowboy drifts into town and becomes the sheriff, and one guy asks him, “How come we never heard of you?” He says, “Well, I would not want a reputation, because I am basically just on my way to Australia.” “Why do you want to go to Australia?” “Well, that is the last great frontier.” And the other cowboys are going, “I thought we were the Wild West. I thought we were the last great frontier.” But this cowboy is basically saying, “Look, I am just passing through. I am going to stop off here a while, and then I am going to keep on going.” It is almost as if the apostle Paul is saying, “I cannot stay long. I want to come to Rome, but basically I am on my way to Australia.” Basically, he is on his way to Spain, heading through Rome as a foundation for his future missionary endeavors. So throughout the book of Romans, to this church he has never met but perhaps knows by reputation, he wants to make sure they are very, very clear on the gospel. He wants to make sure there is a complete understanding of who he is and of his understanding of the gospel, the truth, as an apostle, a sent one. He wanted to base out of there and go further down the road.
Breaking Down the Book
Various people have broken this book down in many different ways. Some have said chapters 1 through 4 reveal God’s promises, chapters 5 through 8 describe the new humanity we have through Jesus Christ, chapters 9 through 11 are about Israel and the promises still remaining for them, and chapters 12 through 16 are about what it means for us to be followers of Jesus Christ. When I was preaching this with our teenagers several years ago, I used a five-section breakdown that I would repeat with them often. Chapters 1 through 3: the book starts with condemnation. We will go chapter by chapter and look through some of that. Chapters 3 through 5 are about salvation, the new Adam, and so on. Chapters 6 through 8 are about sanctification, or how to grow as a Christian. Chapters 9 through 11 are about dispensation, the dispensation of the Jews and the heart the apostle Paul has for his people. And chapters 12 through 16 are application, just saying, “Look, go live for God all the rest of your life.”
Chapter 1 focuses on the gospel: the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, the justice of God, that we can be made just, made right, and live by faith. Before we get to that righteous standing with God, the first several chapters talk about the distorted view of God that we have. If we think we can just be right with God automatically, he takes chapter 1 to say, “Look, there is a rejection of God broadly across society.” In chapter 2, the Jewish readers might have been thinking, “This is not us. It is those really bad people out there. Yeah, get those Gentiles.” And chapter 2 is all about, “Well, no, wait a minute. You are rejecting Jesus as your Saviour too, and the fact that you have the law makes you more responsible. You have not been keeping the law perfectly, which is what the law demands.” So he uses the law to expose the Jews’ need for their Saviour as well. Then in chapter 3, the conclusion is that all are in sin. But the good news is that Jesus took that sin, and verse 24 of chapter 3 shows us that we can have justification. We can be made righteous. We can become just, having the righteousness of God imputed to our account, as we see in chapter 1. That is the work of Jesus Christ. There is a new status, a new family, a new future, as someone broke it down, all in Jesus Christ. And if that is the foundation, then the question is, who is in this new family, if it is not just by being born a Jew? Before Abraham, people were justified by faith, not by family, and chapters 4 and 5 deal with that. In chapter 5, before Abraham there was Adam, and now there is a new humanity in Christ. We will see a lot of parallels between the first man, Adam, and the first perfect One, Christ, really a contrast between judgment and freedom, between death and life. Chapter 5 goes back and forth between Adam and Jesus. Chapter 6 starts with the idea that if the grace of God has been applied to my account, how do I live as a Christian? Leaving this old humanity behind and following Jesus Christ, what do I do as a Christian? It starts by saying, “Look, your baptism shows that you are a new follower of Jesus Christ. You are a new creature. You are different.” Chapter 7 fits in the law for the Christian and shows us our need for Christ. And chapter 8 is the crowning jewel of the Bible: God’s Holy Spirit empowers us to live as this new creation. We are something different, and by the Holy Spirit’s power we can be what we are; we can live according to the truth of what we are.
So chapters 1 through 8 lay out this massive plan of God, and the Jewish readers might have been thinking, “Well, what about us? What about the promises that have not been fulfilled yet?” So chapter 9 takes up the idea of ethnic Jews. Ethnicity is not automatic; being a Jew does not mean you are automatically good with God. There are people of faith. “But wait a minute, what about our ethnicity?” In chapter 9 the apostle Paul deals with that, saying, “Man, I ache for my people. I love the Jewish people.” We will try to deal with what chapters 9 through 11 cover. There is a book called The Potter’s Promise, and many others, that give a verse-by-verse exposition of those chapters, and when we get there we will try to tackle it all phrase by phrase. Chapter 10, even in its very first verse, is basically saying that many are not saved, but by chapter 11 it is not as if they are written off. No, the end of chapter 11 is a glorious look at who God is and how His purposes will be fulfilled in mankind. The Gentiles will be grafted in, and one day God’s people will acknowledge Him. How that happens, when it happens, and how much of it is happening now, we are living part of that history right now, but I know there is still a future.
In chapters 12 through 16, the gospel life is presented, the theology of living as a Christian with the gospel in view. That changes a Christian. That changes your everyday life. It turns us into completely new creatures. Chapters 12 and 13 say, “Look, if you love the Lord, you love your neighbor, and you serve one another with the Holy Spirit’s giftings, in love and humility.” Chapters 14 and 15 deal with some of the specific things they were facing in the church at Rome, and we can take those as principles for us to unify in love. Then chapter 16 has closing remarks commending Phoebe, probably the carrier of the letter, and lists several names of people he absolutely loves and misses, wants to see, and is thankful for. He is expressing in love the things he has been talking about through this whole letter. So that gives the overview. I will give a little more detail in the next video, but for now, that is all we have for this first introductory look at the book of Romans. I am so excited about the next video. We will see you then.
