Well, I am excited to be back into reading Romans today. Although today is more of a recap, but I’m excited for where we are going. I think I’m going to do a deep exploration into John’s Gospel next.

For today though, let’s remind ourselves that Romans is a manuscript that was written by Paul to the church in Rome, a larger church that was going to serve as a jumping off point to allow Paul to get over to Spain eventually. That never materialized, but what we see here in this letter is Paul riding to a church that has become fractured between more of a group of legalists, Jewish Christians, and more liberals, mostly the Gentiles.   One great thing about this manuscript is that it can inform us a lot as to how Paul might address some of the issues we see in the church today. No doubt, that’s part of God‘s intention for giving us this book.

These first eight chapters that we have gone through can really be broken into two sections, four chapters apiece. The first four chapters starts with the theme that all humanity is trapped in sin and needs to be rescued. It goes on in chapter 2 to prove that rescue won’t happen by trying to obey the laws of the Torah, we are hopeless in our efforts in that vein in chapter 3 we are shown that God‘s righteousness has rescued the world though, through Jesus.  And then, chapter 4, the end of section 1, Paul shows us that the purpose of God’s rescue is to create a faith based, multi ethnic family of Abraham. As a result of our placing our faith in Jesus, we are given a new status as being right with God, a new family as being included in God’s people, and a new Hope for a transformed life through our walk with Jesus.  So this section serves as a theological foundation for the rest of the book.

Then, in section 2, chapters 5 through 8, we see in chapter 5 a retelling of the story of Adam. Adam‘s name literally means “humanity“, which Paul contrasts with Jesus who is called “the new Adam”, or a new humanity. In chapter 6 Paul teaches that following Jesus marks a transition from that old humanity and Adam to a more Jesus-like life; the idea being that we are somehow transformed in that process.  In chapter 7 Paul poses a question that most Christians will eventually ask, which is a question of why even bother with having the first five books of the Bible, the law, and the 613 commands of Moses - if the law was not the way back to God, why even bother?  This is a great question, and it proves something about God. The law was not for God’s benefit, it was for ours.  The Law demonstrated God‘s goodness and his intention, and it illustrated that evil has hijacked the human heart and that we are incapable of fixing the problem ourselves.  People tried and tried and failed continually to live up to God‘s standard. Only one person ever pulled that off, and in chapter 8 we are shown that this was the purpose of Jesus, to be the solution, that he became what we are that we might become who he is, justified in God’s eyes.

Those are eight heavy chapters. Romans, in general, is a pretty dense manuscript. But, it is Paul’s most theological writing, and he has covered quite a lot of ground in about as succinct of a fashion as a person could ask.

So, we are off and running with chapter 9 tomorrow!