A Messenger From God Series

As many of you know, I came to saving faith in Christ as an older teenager, and I began reading my Bible regularly, even then.

One evening my dad poked his head into the room while I was reading my Bible. Now my dad was a rank pagan, but he said something interesting. He said, “Someday, I’m going to read that book.”

He was like many people who are pagans but have some sense that the Bible is a special book, that it might be very relevant to their lives and especially their eternal future. However, despite some level of curiosity, and because many other things are deemed to be more important, they often put it off, many I’m sure until it’s too late.

Well, if you’re in the same category as my dad, and many others, wondering what the Bible is all about, and what its core message is, your day has come. You have come to the right place, because this morning we embark on our study of the one book in the Bible that is probably the fullest exposition and explanation of what God has to say about our relationship to Him. And that’s the Book of Romans.

The letter to the Romans, written by the great Apostle Paul, can rightly be called the Magnum Opus of all Paul’s New Testament letters. It clearly was an effort by the Apostle Paul to write to the church at the center of the civilized world and explain just about everything He knew and believed about man’s relationship with God, and especially to focus on the issue of how a sinful man can be made right in God’s sight.

That it is undeniably a great book and of supreme value among the books of the New Testament has been the opinion of many scholars and famous writers. The poet Samuel Coleridge once wrote that Romans is “the most profound book in existence.” My seminary professor, John Grassmick wrote, “It stands as the greatest exposition of the Christian gospel ever written and thus has always been a major bulwark of evangelical Christianity.”

Martin Luther wrote: “This epistle is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.” And John Calvin wrote, “if we understand this Epistle, we have a passage opened to us to the understanding of the whole of Scripture.”

And thus, I can rightfully claim, if you desire to read the Bible someday, hearing the message of the Book of Romans is a summary of all that the Bible teaches, written by an inspired writer, the great apostle Paul.

Now the book was written by Paul in 57 or 58 A.D. probably as Paul was in or around Corinth, Greece. The letter was unique in these respects: First, unlike most of Paul’s letters, this letter was written to a church and a city where he had never been. With the exception of Colossians, Paul had either founded or actually been to the churches he addressed and preached the Gospel there personally. But in this case, not knowing for sure that He would ever reach Rome, though it was on his itinerary, He clearly determined to write, to put down on paper, what He clearly had preached orally in other places. And thus, we have this full explanation of his insight into the relationship between God and man, and how a man can be right with God, in this letter, as is in no other letter He produced.

Secondly, as Paul wrote this, He was impressed with the monumental importance of this letter, because of where it was going and to whom it was written. It was said in those times that “All roads lead to Rome.” And that was true. It was the capital of the Roman Empire, and therefore the capital of the entire civilized world, and thus very influential. Not only was it true that all roads led to Rome, but all roads led from Rome. So Paul, I believe, knew how incredibly influential his letter would be as he was writing it, not only in Rome, where there was already a great Christian church, but also with regard to its influence on the whole Roman Empire. And he had been appointed by the Lord Jesus to be the apostle especially to the Gentiles, who, of course, made up most of the population of the empire.

The basic theme of the Book of Romans is the Gospel of Jesus Christ—that is the good news that all men can be made right with God and be sure of heaven simply through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. God had recently, within the previous 25-30 years, intervened in human history supernaturally in a way He never had before with the coming of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. Christ had died to pay the penalty for the sins of the world and proved it by His resurrection from the dead. And He had offered heaven as a free gift to anyone who would put his faith, his repentant faith, in Him. This was incredibly good news, and the world needed to hear it. And the Apostle Paul was God’s chosen instrument to take it to the pagan, or Gentile world. This Good News had already reached Rome, and a great church had been established there, before Paul wrote this letter. This letter was designed to encourage and to keep this new church on the right track with regard to the truth of the Gospel and how to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.