Paul\'s Epistle to the Romans: Grace Abounding

Christian Worldview in Romans

Paul's Epistle to the Romans is perhaps the most extensive discussion of Christian doctrine in the New Testament. This fact is probably due to the circumstances of Paul's composition of the letter: written at a time of tension between Jews and Gentiles in the church at Rome, the letter addresses specifically the doctrine of salvation and its availability to all. Additionally, John Murray notes that Paul "had not founded nor had he yet visited the church at Rome." [footnoteRef:0] As a result, the letter provides a more painstaking approach to laying out doctrinal concepts that matches Paul's establishment of his own good faith in the letter's opening, while its ultimate purpose is to express Gospel truth with a specific focus (as noted) on salvation. [0: John Murray. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. p.1.]

Paul's view of Creation in the epistle is familiar to anyone with some basic grounding in Christian doctrine. In Chapter 1 he notes that since the creation the invisible powers of God -- his omnipotence and omnipresence -- have been manifest in creation itself. Then in Chapter 5, Paul offers a more specific view of creation that should be familiar to most Christians: the basic doctrine that sin and death entered into the world with Adam, and that this necessitated first the Mosaic law, but that ultimately this brought about redemption through Jesus Christ (5:12-15). This is a clear and straightforward statement of the idea of original sin, although as the rest of the epistle makes clear, this omnipresence of sin (as noted at 3:23, where Paul observes that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God) is matched by the abounding quality of God's grace which makes salvation available to everyone: as Paul states it succinctly in Romans 11:32, God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he might exercise His mercy upon all. In response to Adam's bringing death into the world, Romans 6:23 notes that God's gift to mankind is eternal life in Jesus Christ. Chapters 5 through 11 of the epistle generally address the question of salvation, although much of this is taken up with the specific issues that occasioned the letter, namely the quarrel between Gentile and Jew in Christ's earliest church at Rome, which had led to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the pagan emperor Claudius. But Paul makes it clear that the essence of salvation is, in fact, faith in Christ -- he states this clearly at 3:28, and quotes the Old Testament (in a description of Abraham's faith) at 4:3. However this promise of abounding grace and salvation does not undercut God's eschatological role at the day of judgment. This is addressed by Paul in Chapter 2, when he warns that, at the day of God's wrath, those who reject the truth and do evil (whether Gentile or Jew) will be repaid by God according to the deeds that they have done (2:6).

Paul's depiction of Christ in the Epistle to the Romans is again the most straightforward statement of orthodox concepts that we have in the New Testament. Paul affirms early in the letter at 1:3 that Jesus was descended from David and thus establishes his literal kingship and messianic claim. At Romans 3:22-26, Paul emphasizes Christ's sacrifice on the cross was literally one of atonement for the sins of mankind. Here Paul emphasizes that the sacrifice redeems Jew and Gentile alike, and that Christ's sacrifice guarantees grace and redemption for all who believe. Indeed in Romans Chapter 5, Paul emphasizes that Christ genuinely died for the least worthy, the ungodly and the sinners, as this is the fullest expression of God's mercy to extend such reconciliation to all. By the next chapter, Paul is emphasizing that Christ's resurrection is something that the believer takes part in, through a sort of spiritual rebirth or renewal: the believer's old self (of sin and ungodliness) may be considered to be crucified with Christ, and the believer is therefore reborn into an eternal life with Christ. This is why, in his extensive commentary on Romans, Douglas Moo notes that "we have not arrived at a full understanding of Jesus if we look at him only from the standpoint of 'the flesh'."[footnoteRef:1] In other words the spiritual component of both the incarnation and the resurrection in which we all as believers take part seems to be the most important way for Paul of understanding Christ. [1: Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. p.47.]