Romans: About Rome

Once again, all italics are from the MacCarthur Bible Commentary!

Rome was the capital and most important city of the Roman Empire.  In Paul’s day, the city had a population of over one million people, many of whom were slaves.

Around half the people in Rome were slaves, thus making it likely that around half of the believers that Paul is writing to in this letter were slaves as well.  This Church body is unlike anything we can understand in the United States.  He is writing to a people that are unequal in terms of their place in society but are one in the body of Christ. 

 

Rome boasted magnificent buildings, such as the emperor’s palace, the Circus Maximus, and the Forum, but its beauty was marred by the slums in which so many people lived.

There were some extravagantly wealthy people in Rome (that had many, many slaves) but many of the people lived in extreme poverty. 

It is important to note that the believers that Paul is writing to were faced with persecution daily.  For somebody to claim any other king but Caesar was not tolerated so Christianity was a threat to be removed.  Some believers were fed to the lions in the Coliseum.  Others were crucified.  They met together secretly in houses to avoid arrest (like people do in China and Muslim countries today). 

Paul had long sought to visit the Roman church, but had been prevented from doing so (Romans 1:13).  In God’s providence, Paul’s inability to visit Rome gave the world this inspired masterpiece of gospel doctrine.  Paul’s primary purpose in writing Romans was to teach the great truths of the gospel of grace to believers who had never received apostolic instruction.

Since Paul had never been to Rome, his primary purpose of writing was to teach.  None of the Apostles had been to Rome and they were in need of doctrinal instruction.  However, they were not shooting in the dark either.  They still had good teachers as part of their Church body.  Priscilla and Aquila, a couple of Paul’s disciples, were part of the Roman church at this time (Romans 16:3).  These two worked as tentmakers with Paul at Corinth (Acts 18:1-3), helped mentor early church leader Apollos (Acts 18:26), and also led a house church in Ephesus for a while (1 Corinthians 16:19).

As the preeminent doctrinal work in the New Testament, Romans naturally contains a number of difficult passages.

Oh boy, fun times ahead.  Shall we begin?

 I think it’s important to always study the words of the Bible in its proper context.  You can literally make the Bible say whatever you want it to say if ignoring the contexts in which verses are written.  Now that a little bit of a contextual foundation has been laid, lets start digging into Paul’s wonderfully crafted letter to the Church in Rome!