We have no record of who founded the church in Rome. But Jews from Rome were present at Pentecost, and may well have returned with the gospel. By the time Paul wrote this letter to the Romans the Jews had been forced out of Rome by the emperor Claudius, and the church no longer had its founding teachers to lead them.
Read More Rome, credentials, who Jesus isWhen I read this I’m overawed by the faithfulness of Paul in his prayers. The Christians there had not come to faith through Paul, and he had not met most of them. Yet he never stopped praying for them.
How often do we allow the pressures of life to become an excuse for our lack of prayer?
Read More witness, prayer, inclusivenessWhen the risen Christ confronted Saul/Paul on the Damascus road, Paul’s whole life was radically changed. He turned from flushing out Christians in Damascus to kill them, to joining with them in worshipping their God whom he now knew. He turned from hate and rage to love and peace.
Read More life, commitment, transformation, righteousnessJust the other day, when I was driving on the highway, someone abruptly cut in front of me, and I had to brake to avoid an accident. I don’t need to tell you what I felt at that moment. But then I remembered that I had done just the same thing to someone else only a few days previously.
Read More God’s anger, sin, judgment, double standardThe church in Rome had Christians who were Jews and Christians who were Gentiles. Naturally there would have been friction between them. The relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians was a major issue in the New Testament church. (See Acts 15 for an account of how the issue was resolved.)
Read More baptism, law, Gentile, circumcision, JewThe Jews believed they were the chosen people, and that God had blessed them by revealing himself to them. Yet when they read here what Paul was saying to them about their traditions they must have thought that he was making light of all they held as precious.
Paul anticipates this criticism. He assures them he is not discrediting all that God has done for them.
Read More privilege, responsibility, witnessWhen the Jews were rescued from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, God gave them the Law. This was much more than what we normally think of as the law. It comprised all the things that God wanted them to do to represent him as their God.
Read More acceptance with God, Jew, Gentile, lawThe Jews traced their ancestry back to Abraham, a man who first came to Israel from Ur of the Chaldees (in present day Iraq) to settle in the Promised Land. They put a lot of stock in the fact that they were God’s chosen people, They were circumcised as a mark of this. When the Christian gospel came to people outside the Jewish faith, this raised a burning issue for the Jews.
Read More faith, acceptance with God, circumcision, gentiles, JewsThere are some difficult words in Romans 4. Difficult not because they send us running to the dictionary, but difficult because in the biblical context they don’t mean what they do in everyday speech and can be misleading.
Read More translation, righteousness, faith