It is not recorded by what means the gospel first reached Rome. We know from Acts 2:10 that some from that city were present in Jerusalem at Pentecost, and they would doubtless carry back the gospel with them; this may have led to the formation of the church at Rome.
There were doubtless saints at Rome at an early date, for this epistle declares that their faith was proclaimed in the whole world (Rom.1:8), and Paul speaks of some there who were in Christ before himself, though these may have gone to Rome later, for they had at some time been his fellow-prisoners. (Rom. 16:7.)
We must not conclude that because an epistle is addressed to a church located among the nations that it was composed exclusively or chiefly of Gentile converts. It is clear that many Jews resided at Rome. Pompey overran Judæa about 63 years B.C., and caused many Jews to be sold into slavery at Rome; but their masters could not prevent them from keeping the sabbath, nor from observing many other Jewish customs, and so they liberated a good many rather than be troubled with them. A place of residence was assigned to them opposite Rome, across the Tiber. Josephus speaks of “eight thousand Jews”, belonging to Rome, joining an embassy from Judaea.
There are internal evidences in the epistle which show that the church at Rome was composed of both Jewish and Gentile converts. Paul says, "I speak to them that know the law." (Rom. 7:1-4; cf. also Rom. 2:17; 3:19.) As to Gentile converts, Paul hoped to come to them that he might have fruit among them, as among other nations also. "I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles." (Rom. 11:13.)
The apostle, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was very careful to anticipate and meet the peculiar difficulties that would naturally arise in the minds of the Jewish converts, with whose ancestors God had formerly made the first covenant, and to whom He had given the promises. (Rom. 9, 10, 11)
He also exhorted the Gentile converts to walk charitably toward those who still regarded days and abstained from meats. Rom. 14.-15:7.
The epistle is an exhaustive statement, orderly and strong in argument, clear in expression, and convincingly earnest in tone, of the great truths which form the groundwork of the gospel. All the world is brought in guilty, and in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed apart from law. On the ground of the blood of Christ. God justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus.
The first part of this epistle (Rom. 1-5:11) fully and effectively answers Job's important question: "How can man be just with God?" with a consideration of all the surroundings of such a question.
In the second part of the epistle (Rom. 5:12-8.) man's nature and the believer's new position in Christ is revealed.
In the third part (Rom. 9-11.) God's promises to Israel are considered, showing that He had always acted in sovereignty and according to the election of grace.
In Rom. 12. to the end, are shown the moral consequences of the doctrine brought out in the epistle. Man is looked at as alive in the world, and the believer is not viewed as risen, but the old man is crucified with Christ, with responsibilities of a new kind under grace.
There is a fine fitness shown in the fact that such an epistle should be addressed to the saints at Rome, the metropolis of the then known world.
The epistle was written by Paul when at Corinth, about A.D. 58 (Acts 20:1-3).
Rom. 1:1-18
give concisely the theme of the epistle.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated to the gospel of God to all that be at Rome beloved of God, saints by calling.
Paul greatly desired to see them to have fruit among them as among other Gentiles.
The gospel is the tower of God unto salvation. For therein is righteousness of God revealed, on the principle of faith unto faith, apart from anything of man's doings for God. The just shall live by faith.
At the same time the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness (as Gentile evil and open sin) and against all unrighteousness of those who hold the truth (as Jews and, now we may add, professing Christendom) but who hold it in unrighteousness. Religious and irreligious, orthodox and infidel, are herein included. God will have reality.
Rom. 1:19-32 give a sad but a true picture of the ungodly Gentile world. God was to be seen in creation, and had been known as Creator by the family of Noah; but men turned from God, and, setting up idolatry, dishonored God '. therefore He gave them up to dishonor themselves with vile affections. He declares the heathen to be without excuse, because of what might be known (ver. 19), and also of what had been known (ver. 21).
Rom. 2:1-6.
Gentile philosophers had judged the evil condition of man, but did the same things,' and thus condemned themselves. The judgment of God must follow where any despise the goodness of God that leads to repentance. God, in judgment, is no respecter of persons.
Rom. 2:6-16 state the principles according to which God will judge, namely, according to the moral character of things, and according to what is or may be known by man. Eternal life would be the reward of those only who patiently continued in well-doing; wrath and indignation that of every evil-doer. Though the Gentiles had not the law, the work of the law was in their hearts, their conscience either excusing or accusing them. They knew they were doing wrong, and yet did it. God would judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to the gospel committed to Paul. (Verses 13-15 are a parenthesis: it is " judged by the law.... in the day," &c.)
Rom. 2:17-29. The Jew is now shown to be guilty. He had the law, but did not keep it; their transgression was such that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them. A man was not really a Jew who was such only by birth and circumcision, and who did not in heart and in spirit regard God, and seek to answer to His claims.
Rom. 3:1-8.
The Jews had great privileges, but this made them no better, for they had, failed to profit by them. Their unbelief could not make void the faith (or faithfulness: cf. 2 Tim. 2:13) of God, and God would be righteous in judging the Jew as well as the Gentile.
Rom. 3:9-20. The Jews were no better than the Gentiles: all were charged with being' under sin.' This is further proved by quotations from the scriptures in which they boasted. Every mouth is stopped, and by law none could be justified. (Three classes are reviewed from chap. 1:19: I, The openly wicked; the philosophers who condemned sin in their teaching; the Jews with the oracles of God: all were guilty.)
Rom. 3:21-31. All having been proved guilty, the righteousness of God apart from law is revealed by faith of Jesus Christ (faith characterized by that name and His work) towards all alike, Jew and Gentile, and upon all that believe; the believer is justified freely by grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Thus God is shown to be just in having passed over the sins that are past (of Old Testament saints in view then of redemption to be wrought in Christ), and (redemption having been wrought) He is now just in justifying him that is of the faith of Jesus.
A man therefore is justified without (apart from, to the exclusion of) deeds of law. God is God of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. The Jew is justified by (on the principle of) faith in contrast to law-keeping, and the Gentile through (by means of) faith when he believes. This gospel does not make void the law; but, on the contrary, establishes its authority as nothing else could; for its sentence on the Jew is maintained, and Christ bore its curse: cf. Gal. 3:13.
Rom. 4.
Abraham and David were justified on this same principle. Abraham believed God, and his faith was reckoned as righteousness (not because his faith had intrinsic value in itself, but God held him as righteous because of his faith). David also speaks of the blessedness of the man who was forgiven, whose sin was covered, and to whom God would not reckon sin.
Abraham was justified altogether apart from circumcision; and he became the father of all them that believe, whether they were circumcised or not. Abraham was heir of the world, not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
Where no law is, there is no transgression (for there is nothing to transgress), but there is sin: cf. Rom. 2:12. The important principle of life from the dead is now brought in, and righteousness is reckoned to us if we believe on God who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for, with a view to, our justification. Christ is the living witness that God has accepted His work; that our sins are put away; and that there is no charge against us: we are justified.
(This is an advance on Rom. 3., where faith is in Jesus and in His blood, answering to the Passover, blessed as that is, and to the Lord's lot in Lev. 16—propitiation. Here we have our Red Sea—God for us in power, and also what answers to the scapegoat—substitution; here it is our offenses, our justification.)
Rom. 5:1-11
give us the results of being justified. 1. We have peace with God. 2. We have access by faith into the grace, or favor, wherein we stand. 3. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 4. We glory in tribulations also, for the sake of what they bring to us, namely, patience, experience, &c. The key to the tribulations, and the power to bear them, is that the love of God is shed abroad in (pervades) our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (given because we are justified and forgiven). Being justified by the blood of Christ, and being reconciled to God by His death, we shall be saved from wrath, saved by his life. He lives for us in resurrection power. 5. We joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received reconciliation. (It is more than joying in our salvation, we joy in God who has accomplished it in Christ.)
Rom. 5:12-21. Hitherto man's sins have been in question; now there is a deeper question treated of, namely, man’s nature - sin. Here we go back to Adam, and we do not hear of Jew and Gentile, but of what is common to man descended from fallen Adam. By one man sin entered, and death passed upon all men because of Adam's sin, and because all have sinned.
(Read Rom. 5:13-17 as a parenthesis.) Adam had a law, therefore his sin was transgression: from Adam to Moses, men sinned without law and died; but where no law is, sin is not put to account, that is, in God's government in time. Compare Amos 3:2.
But [shall] not, as the offense, so also [be] the free gift? For if by the offense of the one [Adam] the many have died, much rather has the grace of God, and the free gift in grace, which is by the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded unto the many. (Here the persons, the two Adams, are prominent, and the different measure of the results of their acts: there is much rather' and abounding' on the side of good.)
For if by the offense of the one, death reigned by the one, much rather shall those who receive the abundance of grace, and of the free gift of righteousness, reign in life by the one Jesus Christ. (The final result is that the saints shall reign in life.) Rom. 5:18 shows the universality of the bearing of the act of Adam and of Christ towards all, and Rom. 5:19 the actual effect on those connected with the two heads—Adam and Christ. “The many” is the mass of persons actually connected with each of these heads, “Justification of life” is not merely clearance from guilt but from sin in having life in Christ beyond judgment: a life against which there is no charge.
Rom. 5:20 asserts the super abounding of grace over sin, and this agrees with the “much more” or “much rather” of verses 15 and 17. The law came in that the offense (not sin) might abound (it was, under law, not only a sin, but a defiance of God's authority—it was an offense, a transgression).
Rom. 5:21. Sin and grace both reign in turn—the one unto death, the other unto eternal life. (This verse in a few words gives the course and end of man, and the salvation of God.)
Rom. 6.
Here it is practical life, and the deliverance from the power of sin. We have died to sin, therefore cannot continue therein; for our profession of Christianity by baptism was that of being baptized to Christ's death: buried with Him by baptism unto death. Our old man has been crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be annulled: how then can we serve sin? He that has died is justified from sin.
If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him. The power of death is destroyed by the resurrection of Christ. He dies no more.
Just as Christ died unto sin once (not for sin here, but He has done with the question of sin forever), and now lives to God, we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Him. (Cf. Rom. 12:1) We are not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies, nor to yield our members to be instruments of unrighteousness; but to yield ourselves to God as alive from the dead. Sin shall not lord it over us; for we are under the power of grace and not under law.
If we yield ourselves to obey we become the slaves of the one we obey. But we have obeyed from the heart the true doctrine, and are become the slaves of righteousness unto holiness. Being made free from sin and its power, we are become servants of God, and have fruit unto holiness, and the end, everlasting life. We have been delivered from sin as a master, to be now as alive from among the dead, slaves to a new Master, even Christ.
Rom. 7.
This chapter treats of deliverance from the law, and in its later portion describes a soul born again, but under law, not yet knowing deliverance.
Paul illustrates the standing of a person under the law by a woman having a husband: she is bound to him as long as he lives, but may marry another if her husband be dead. So we have died to the law by the body of Christ, that we might be to another (Christ) who has been raised up from the dead in order that we might bear fruit to God. We cannot have the two husbands at the same time.
When we were in the flesh (in that condition before God) we brought forth fruit unto death; but now we are delivered from the law (not by the death of the law, but) by ourselves having died in that wherein we were held.
The workings of the law are now referred to. Paul said he had not known lust unless the law had said, "Thou shalt not lust." (Outward sins he would have known, but it is “sin” here, the state that lusts.) This was stimulated by the commandment: sin revived, and death came upon the conscience.
The law was holy, just, and good and it was spiritual: it applied not merely to crimes, but to the inward man: the failure was in the man. And he was powerless: he could not do what he desired to do; and did that which he hated. He learned that there was nothing good in the flesh. He willed to do good, but had no power to perform what he willed. There was a law, a power to sin that thwarted his doing good, though his delight was in the law of God after the inward man.
He sees he has no power, and cries for deliverance from this body of death, and then is able to thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, as a principle, with the mind I myself serve God's law; but with the flesh sin's law.
Rom. 8.
This chapter is in contrast to Rom. 7. We are here set free (ver. 2), and are not in the flesh (ver. 9). It is indeed a new standing, “in Christ Jesus”, and a new state “in the Spirit”; there is now no condemnation to such. Sin and death have lost their power: it is now life and liberty.
Rom. 8:1. it is the believer “in Christ”; in Rom. 8:10 it is “Christ in us”: one is our standing before God; the other, true christian state and power of life in the world.
The former part of the chapter may be said to he the unfolding of the answer to the question, "Who shall deliver?" It is what God has done in us. the action of the Spirit of God. From Rom. 8:29, it is what God has done for us.
Rom. 8:3, 4 answer to chapter 7. What the law could not do, God sending His Son for sin (or sin-offering, as in Heb. 10:6,8), condemned sin in the flesh (in the cross of Christ), in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk according to the Spirit.
Rom. 8:9. Where the Spirit of God dwells, the person is not in the flesh as a state or condition, but in the Spirit. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is not of Him.
Rom. 8:10. If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin; but the Spirit is life on account of righteousness: cf. Rom. 6:11-13.
Rom. 8:11 speaks of full and final deliverance as to the body.
Rom. 8:12, 13. We are not debtors to the flesh to live after it and die; but if we mortify the deeds of the body we shall live.
Rom. 8:14-17. As many as are led by the Spirit are sons of God, and have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father (in the consciousness of being sons). The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs.
Rom. 8:18-28. The whole creation groaneth because of the sin of man, but it will be delivered into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (in the millennium).
We also groan waiting for the redemption of our body.
The Spirit helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we ought to pray for, and He begetteth groanings within us. But we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, and are the called according to purpose.
Rom. 8:29-39 reveal the wonderful chain of election that reaches backward to eternity—picks us up in time—and reaches forward to the glory. There is no separation from the love of Christ by the way, nor from the love of God: it is our eternal security.
Rom. 9, 10, & 11.
These chapters answer the question, if the Jew and Gentile are equally treated as sinners, what becomes of all the promises to Israel? It is shown that the sovereignty of God in showing mercy has run all through Old Testament history, or the children of Abraham must include Ishmael and Esau.
The Jews could not rely on their own righteousness: they made the golden calf, and are here reminded that, instead of destroying the whole nation, God declared His sovereignty to Moses: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." It was Gods sovereign mercy that saved any of them, and the same sovereign mercy saves the Gentiles.
Man might ask, Why does God find fault? Who has resisted His will? The answer is that God is the potter, and man the clay: He does with the clay as seemeth good to Him.
It is then shown by the prophets that a remnant only would be saved from among the Jews; and that the nation would stumble at the stumbling stone—Christ.
Israel having ruined itself under law, and having rejected Christ, what is the resource of faith? Rom. 10 brings out the word of faith in contrast to the law, and refers to Deut. 29 & 30. the secret things (that is, the resources of God's grace when the nation has broken down in its responsibility under law) are now revealed. No need to ascend, or descend, the word of God is nigh any who turn in heart to God. According to Joel 2:32: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The law, prophets, and Psalms announced beforehand the rebellion of Israel and the present world-wide grace to all.
In Rom. 11. it is proved that God will not fail in His promises, nor cast off His people forever; for, first: Some were then being saved: there was then "a remnant according to the election of grace." (Rom. 11:5). Second: The call of the Gentiles was intended to provoke a holy jealousy in the Jews that they might repent. Third: In the latter days the whole nation would be restored, and be abundantly blessed according to promise. God had shut them all up in unbelief that He might have mercy on them all.
The Gentiles were grafted into the olive tree of promise contrary to nature (the wild branch being put to the good tree); but the Gentiles will be broken off if they continue not in the goodness of God.
A review of the whole of God's purposes for blessing Jews and Gentiles, calls forth a burst of praise to God. (Rom. 11:33-36.)
Rom. 12.
Moral consequences follow according to the teaching of the epistle. As men on earth, set free by grace and redemption, the saints are exhorted to yield themselves to God to do His will.
Rom. 12:4-8 speak of the body of Christ with its many members, each having its own office or function.
Various exhortations follow. Rom. 12:11 refers to all God gives us to do: we are not to be slothful.
Like God Himself we are to overcome evil with good.
Rom. 13.
This enforces obedience to the powers that be, irrespective of their orders being agreeable to us: they are set up by God. “Owe no man anything”, is general: we are to render to all that which is their due—honor, fear, &c.
It is time for the Christian to awake out of sleep: the day is at hand. We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh. This is the practical power of the christian hope, the Lord's coming.
Rom. 14-15:7.
This portion speaks of questions that were sure to arise between Jews and Gentiles as to keeping days, eating meats, &c. Each was to seek the welfare of his christian neighbor: even Christ pleased not Himself.
Rom. 15:8-12.
These verses again refer to Jews and Gentiles. Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God in reference to the promises made to the fathers. In reference to the Gentiles it was grace and mercy, for they had no promises. The Law, Psalms, and Prophets foretold their blessing.
Rom. 15:13-33. Various exhortations. Paul hoped to visit Rome on his way to Spain.
Rom. 16:1-16.
He commends Phebe to their care, and sends many loving greetings and salutations.
Rom. 16:17-27. Warning is given against those who caused divisions; a few more salutations; and the epistle closes with an ascription of praise to the only wise God, who was able to establish them, through Jesus Christ, according to the mystery revealed to Paul, which mystery is set forth, not in this epistle, but in the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians.