Last updated on November 25, 2024
The readings for the next five days are on what most people believe is Paul’s greatest work – the book of Romans. I’ve once again known pastors who have spent a year preaching through this book of the Bible. And countless pages of commentary have been written on it.
This letter is different from the previous ones we’ve looked at in that it’s written to a group of people whom Paul had never met. How had this church been started then? No one really knows for sure. There were Jews from Rome at that Pentecost when the Church was birthed. No doubt many of them returned to Rome at some point. We also know that Priscilla and Aquila were from Rome. They ended up in Corinth, where Paul would meet them, after Emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome (AD 49). Priscilla and Aquila would follow Paul to Ephesus to help him start the church there. When Claudius died in AD 54, so too did the edict banning Jews in Rome. Thus they were able to return. Paul mentions them at the end of this letter, calling them his co-workers and noting they risked their lives for him (Romans 16:3-4).
Rome was of course the largest and most influential city in the Roman Empire. It was a city that Paul longed to go to. The church there knew who he was, and he had no doubt heard stories of who they were. Since at this point he couldn’t visit them, he decided to write them a letter.
Because this was such an influential church in an influential city, he wanted to use this letter as an opportunity to flesh out his theology. This theology had been taking root in his life for the last 25 years. People from all over the known world visited Rome, whether for business or pleasure. Many of those visitors encountered residents who had been shaped by the message of Jesus, and thus many of those visitors would end up taking that same message back to where they were from.
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