What is Romans about?

An essay I wrote for the Moore College External Studies unit on Romans:

Paul’s Letter to the Romans concerns two main questions: how salvation can be achieved and how a person can be part of the people of God. In the course of the letter, Paul argues that both Jew and Gentile need to be justified by faith in order to be saved from God’s wrath and to belong to the people of God.

In Romans 1:16-17, Paul states that the gospel is the power of salvation for both the Jew and the Greek, and in the following section he explains why salvation is needed. 1:18-32 describes the sinfulness of the Gentile world, and 2:1-3:20 shows that the Jews are in just as dire a state. All have sinned and are therefore facing God’s wrath. However, in 3:21, Paul begins to explain the hope of the gospel. God’s righteousness is being revealed in the world – not through the law, which no one has been able to keep, but through faith in Jesus Christ (3:22).

Paul brings this point home to the Jews by using the example of Abraham, the great patriarch of Israel, showing how his righteousness before God was based on faith, not works. For this reason, Gentiles can also take part in the promises God made to Israel through Abraham, if they have faith in God. Paul makes this crystal clear in 10:9: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hear that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, he states, “for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (10:13).

One may ask whether salvation is the same thing as belonging to the people of God, or whether something else is needed. Paul makes it clear that this is not the case. “God shows no partiality,” he declares in 2:11. Even the Jews’ privilege of being “entrusted with the oracles of God” (3:2) does not save them, since they have still broken God’s Law. However, Paul goes beyond the issue of salvation to show that both Jew and Gentile can belong to God. There is only one God, Paul states in 3:29-30, and he is God of the Jews and of the Gentiles. Even more dramatically, Paul argues that the promises made to Abraham apply to all who are his descendents by faith – he is the “father of all who believe without being circumcised” (4:11). It is not enough for a Jew simply to be circumcised (2:28-29), and a Gentile can become one of God’s people without being circumcised. The necessary step is justification by faith.

In addition, the Spirit of God, received after justification by faith, marks people out as belonging to God. “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (8:9), but “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (8:14). This, then, applies to both Jew and Gentile. Although the Jews were chosen by God to be a light to the nations, the salvation of the Gentiles was always part of God’s plan (11:11-12). Even as Paul mourns Israel’s unbelief, he acknowledges that it is the “children of the promise” who are counted as children of God. Finally, the change in a person’s life that happens after salvation – the way to live that Paul sets out in chapters 12-15 – also marks that person out as belonging to God.

Thus, the answers to the two main questions of Romans – how salvation is to be achieved and how entry into God’s people is to be obtained – are determined by the one act of righteousness on the part of Jesus, which allows all people who believe to be justified by faith.