INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF ROMANS
An independent woman started her own business. She was shrewd and diligent, so business kept coming in. Pretty soon she realized she needed an in-house counsel, and so she began interviewing young lawyers.
"As I’m sure you can understand," she started off with one of the first applicants, "in a business like this, our personal integrity must be beyond question." She leaned forward. "Mr. Peterson, are you an ’honest’ lawyer?"
"Honest?" replied the job prospect. "Let me tell you something about honest. Why, I’m so honest that my dad lent me $15,000 for my education and I paid back every penny the minute I tried my very first case."
"Impressive. And what sort of case was that?"
He squirmed in his seat and admitted, "The case where my father sued me for the money."
You may be asking yourself, why am I starting off the series on the book of Romans with a joke about lawyers? Because the book of Romans is written by a former religious lawyer. He is writing as if he were presenting his case before a grand jury. The comic story is to get your attention.
I want your attention this morning because the letter or epistle to the Romans, as it written like a legal document, compels us to make a verdict. What you and I decide will determine a person’s eternal destiny. And the person you are trying is YOU! That’s right! You are in the court and your eternal destiny lies in the balance.
The modern world’s greatest lawyer says: "For the past 18 years I have been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as:
- The Worlds Most Successful Advocate,
- The Winningest Lawyer In The World, with 245 successive murder acquittals and no convictions for murder. Yet, this case, which the Apostle Paul is pleading in the book of Romans, is your case, and it is the most important, vital case anyone has ever argued.."
(The Testimony of SIR LIONEL LUCKHOO, a lawyer named by the Guinness Book of World Records).
As a skilled legal counselor, Paul makes his case by setting the very foundation of the Christian faith.
Point #1: Romans is written in the form of a legal argument. You cannot understand Romans unless you understand this fact.
In the trial not of the century, not of the millennium, but the trial of all human history, Paul sets out to prove one single important point – “that the righteous will inherit eternal life by faith, not by works.”
And so you sit in the defendant’s chair. Your Heavenly Father has a suit against you. You know and agree with chapter 3, verse 23 that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The prosecuting attorney is arguing that you can pay off your debt by doing good works. He represents and advocates the law of Moses. The defendant’s attorney, the Apostle Paul, is arguing that only Christ can pay the debt you owe, and only by faith in his death and resurrection alone will make you declared not guilty.
What is your verdict? Do you work off your debt by works of the law, or do you trust in Christ’s Word that “the righteous man shall live by faith?”
There have been other important cases throughout history, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. the Board of Education, Manson v. Los Angeles County. This one is far more important than all of these.
On a lighter note, two lawyers were walking along negotiating a case. “Look,” said one to the other,
“let’s be honest with each other.”
“Okay, you first,” replied the other lawyer.
That was the end of the discussion.
I shouldn’t be hard on lawyers. Not all lawyers are dishonest ambulance chasers any more than all preachers just work on Sunday.
I was going to become a lawyer at one time. I received a degree in political science, took the Law School Entrance Examination and was accepted into law school. I appreciate a skilled and respectable attorney.
The apostle Paul was such a man. He was a highly educated man, both a man highly educated in matters of the Jewish law and a Pharisee trained from the feet of Gamaliel the most prestigious of the Pharisees. As Paul described himself:
"If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless." Philippians 3:4-6
Paul presents his case in the book of Romans. This morning I am going to introduce the book to you.
Point # 2 This epistle or letter has had an incredible Impact throughout Christian History.
Let’s hear what others say about it. Martin Luther in his book “Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans” argues that:
“This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian’s while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes. Therefore I want to carry out my service and, with this preface, provide an introduction to the letter, insofar as God gives me the ability, so that every one can gain the fullest possible understanding of it. . . . it is in itself a bright light, almost bright enough to illumine the entire Scripture.”
John Calvin has said that "When anyone gains a knowledge of this Epistle he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture."
Finally F.F. Bruce is quoted as saying "Time and again in the course of human history {Romans} has liberated the minds of men, brought them back to an understanding of the essential gospel of Christ, and started spiritual revolutions."
Warren W. Wiersbe: in his commentary on the book of Romans tells the story of a man whose life was changed by this book and who in turned changed the lives of literally millions of men and women:
"On May 24, 1738, a discouraged missionary went ’very unwillingly’ to a religious meeting in London. There a miracle took place. ’About a quarter before nine,’ he wrote in his journal, ’I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’
That missionary was John Wesley. The message he heard that evening was the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans. Just a few months before, Wesley wrote in his journal: ’I went to America to convert the Indians; but Oh! who shall convert me?’ That evening in Aldersgate Street, his question was answered. And the result was the great Wesleyan Revival that swept England and transformed the nation."
The book of Romans is to Christianity what the Declaration of Independence is to America and the Magna Charta is to Great Britain! It can set you free if you study it and believe it.
Point #3 Romans has a uniquely Jewish flavor to it. If you don’t have a cursory knowledge of Judaism you can’t understand Romans.
1. Paul quotes no less than 69 times in this letter scripture from the Old Testament.
2. The Apostle Paul (or Saul of Tarsus as he was known from birth up until his conversion) was born to prominent Jewish parents – roughly at about the same time as the birth of Christ -- in the cosmopolitan city of Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. Tarsus was a Roman colony. As a male born in a Roman colony to a Jewish family that owned property there, Paul was privileged to hold Roman citizenship, a status that allowed for unlimited travel within the Roman Empire and widespread civil rights.
As a son of devout Hebrew parents, he was sent as a teenager to study in Jerusalem, where he was tutored by the foremost rabbi of the time, Gamaliel, of the sect of Pharisees. Saul, too, became one of the "Separated Ones" who felt that God had set them apart to live strictly by the Torah -- the Law of Moses. Their obsessive adherence to the Law included observance also to the overwhelming number of interpretations that had been written down and appended to the Torah by generations of Jewish religious lawyers.
Jesus infuriated the Pharisees by interpreting the Law as it was originally meant to be interpreted and teaching His interpretations "as one having authority."
After Jesus was crucified, Saul and the Pharisees sought to wipe out all followers of Jesus. Saul was especially zealous in persecuting Christians at that time. He was not unlike a Nazi in his devotion to his upbringing and his religion. He was hard-core.
A. JEWS & THE ROMAN EMPIRE
At the time of Jesus and Paul, the land of Israel had been part of the Roman Empire for several decades. The first emperor, Julius Caesar, granted rights to Jewish communities because their ancestral laws even predated the Roman Empire.
Jews were the only minority given legal privileges in the Roman Empire giving them the right to assemble, have common meals and property, govern and tax themselves, and enforce their own discipline except the death penalty. The Jews were sort of a state within a state.
All of this authority was placed under the sponsorship of the Synagogue and its legal body, the Sanhedrin. Many scholars argue that the Jews were also given exemption from military service and emperor worship. Under Roman law, no new religions were allowed and all other religions (other than Judaism) were forbidden by the Caesar in the city of Rome. (1) The Mystery of Romans, Mark Nanos, 1996, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, pp. 43-46.
S43 B. THE ROLE OF THE SYNAGOGUE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE- The authority given by the Romans to the Synagogue explains such occurrences as Paul being able to persecute Jewish believers (before his conversion) as mentioned in the book of Acts. (These were Messianic Jewish believers, still under the authority of the Synagogue, even as believers.)
The Synagogue had the right to enforce discipline on anyone who was under their authority. As Scripture points out, Paul was given the "39 lashes" by the Synagogue authorities on more than one occasion (2 Corinthians 6:3-10; Acts 21:21-26; 32). The synagogue was the preeminent institution of religious practice, education, law, Jewish social functions and Hebrew culture.
There was a hierarchy of authority and all ultimately answered to the Sanhedrin.
The Jewish society extended of course in the city of Rome consisting of a number of synagogue communities. About a dozen have been positively identified, but there were likely many more, due to smaller size of the homes of the Jews, that were mostly located in less affluent sections of Rome. Meetings were often held in the larger homes.
It is also important for this study to note that such gatherings were also considered to be held under Jewish synagogue authority as they were the only religious group allowed to do this by law. There were no "Christian house churches," as is often incorrectly taught. Not only would have been illegal to hold such meetings, but Christianity as a separate sect did not exist at the time of Paul’s letter to Rome.
Many of these Synagogues eventually branched of to become Messianic Assemblies.
C. THE MESSIANIC SYNAGOGUES, meeting in homes in Rome, were most likely started by believers who returned to Rome after hearing the gospel preached at Pentecost and they brought back this “good news” or “Gospel” to Rome. None of the Apostles started these predominantly Jewish assemblies in Rome.
The book of Romans was written to give doctrinal and practical foundations and to convince these believers that salvation is through faith alone, not through the practice or observance of the law.
Don’t misunderstand me. We are not released from the law when we become Christians – we are still required to obey the spirit of the law as contained in the Old Testament. At the time of the writing of Romans, there was no “New Testament.” S46 Hence the only scripture the Romans knew was the Old Testament. The law still applies to us but we are able to keep the spirit of the law by the power of the Holy Spirit and as an outcome of our salvation by faith alone.
But let us never put the “cart before the horse” That is religiosity—our attempt to please God by our own efforts.
D. CONCLUSION: Paul has made his case as a former expert in the law. His argument is convincing and life changing.
It reminds me of the following lawyer joke:
Lawyer: “Now that you have been acquitted, will you tell me truly? Did you steal the car?”
Client: “After hearing your amazing argument in court this morning, I’m beginning to think I didn’t.”
If the aforementioned lawyer was that convincing to get a car thief off the hook, how much more so a former lawyer who is also convincing and tells us the truth!
And in the weeks to come we will examine the details of his argument that salvation is by faith alone. And in case you are wondering, S48 salvation by faith is not a New Testament concept: Habbakuk 2:4 says: “But the righteous will live by his faith.”
Even as far back as the time of Abraham salvation by faith is clearly taught in the Old Testament. Genesis 15:6 Then {Abraham} believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. Therefore, salvation by faith is not a brand new concept. It is taught all through the Hebrew scripture. We must cease and desist our gentile inclination to marginalize the Old Testament and declare it null and void. We are also in debt to the Jews who have brought us this good news. Jesus declares in John 4:22: for salvation is from the Jews.
As far as God is concerned, apart from Christ—if you have not place your faith and trust in Him, you are declared “guilty” by the judge of the universe. But the good news—the gospel—which was prophesied hundreds of years before Christ, tells us we can be saved through faith in Christ. If you are “in Christ” the verdict has been handed down: you are declared “Not Guilty.” Next week we will look at the first 17 verses of this letter and get to know this defense attorney-the Apostle Paul, and his authority, and his love for the people of God.
