Written by Paul the Apostle (dictated to Tertius, named in chapter 16)
Introduction
The book of Romans is the most systematically argued letter in the New Testament — Paul writing around AD 57 from Corinth to a church he had never visited, gathering the entire weight of the gospel into a single document. He had reasons of his own for doing it: he was about to deliver an offering to Jerusalem and hoped afterward to travel through Rome on his way to Spain, and he wanted the Roman believers to know exactly what gospel he preached before he arrived. What he produced was not a casual letter of introduction. It was a comprehensive theological argument that would, in the centuries that followed, convert Augustine in a Milanese garden, ignite Luther’s reformation, melt John Wesley’s heart at Aldersgate, and become the document any serious Christian thinker eventually has to come back to and read again.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” — Romans 1:16
The structure of Romans is the structure of the gospel itself. Paul opens with the universal problem — chapters 1 through 3 establish that all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, stands under the wrath of God because all have sinned and fall short of His glory. He then turns to the universal solution in chapters 3 through 5: a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. This righteousness is freely given, justification is by faith and not by works, and Abraham himself is the proof that this has always been God’s way. Chapters 6 through 8 trace what happens to the person who has been justified — dead to sin, alive to God in Christ Jesus, no longer under the law’s condemnation, walking by the Spirit, more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Chapter 8 is where Paul’s argument crests: nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Chapters 9 through 11 turn to the question that haunts the whole letter: if the gospel has gone to the Gentiles, what about Israel? Paul refuses the easy answers. The promises have not failed. The natural branches were broken off, the wild olive shoots grafted in, and a partial hardening has come on Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in — and so all Israel will be saved. The mystery is too deep for tidy resolution, and Paul ends the section in doxology: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. Then chapters 12 through 16 turn the entire architecture into practical instruction — present your bodies as living sacrifices, love sincerely, bless those who persecute you, owe nothing except love, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The doctrine of the first eleven chapters is not abstract; it produces a kind of life that the world cannot otherwise produce. The book closes with greetings to twenty-six named individuals in Rome — including Phoebe the deacon who carried the letter, Priscilla and Aquila who had risked their necks for him, and a woman named Junia whom Paul calls outstanding among the apostles. The gospel that began as cosmic argument lands, as it always does, in the names of specific people who carry it.
Chapters in Romans
• Chapter 1 – The Wrath of God and the Guilt of Man
• Chapter 2 – God’s Righteous Judgment
• Chapter 3 – No One is Righteous
• Chapter 4 – Abraham Justified by Faith
• Chapter 5 – Peace with God Through Faith
• Chapter 6 – Dead to Sin, Alive to God
• Chapter 7 – The War Within
• Chapter 8 – Life in the Spirit
• Chapter 9 – God’s Sovereign Choice
• Chapter 10 – The Word Is Near You
• Chapter 11 – The Remnant and the Grafting
• Chapter 12 – Living Sacrifices and Transformed Minds
• Chapter 13 – Submission, Love, and Living Awake
• Chapter 14 – Let God Be Judge
• Chapter 15 – The Strong Bear the Weak
• Chapter 16 – The Final Greetings and a Lasting Warning