Romans 1
A letter to a church Paul has never visited opens with the most carefully crafted self-introduction in the New Testament.
Summary
Romans 1 opens with one of the most carefully constructed greetings in Paul's letters. He is writing to a church he has never visited, and he knows it; the introduction is longer and more formal than any of his letters to communities he founded. He names himself as set apart for the gospel of God — promised beforehand in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son, descended from David according to the flesh, declared to be Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. The christological formula is compressed but complete: Davidic descent, resurrection declaration, lordship. Paul then explains his long-deferred desire to visit Rome, and at verses 16-17 states the thesis he will spend the next fifteen chapters arguing: the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith.
The second half of chapter 1 is Paul's indictment of the Gentile world, the opening movement of a sustained case that all human beings, Jew and Gentile alike, stand in need of the gospel. His argument is that the knowledge of God is not hidden — his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived in what has been made — and that therefore those who turned from the creator to worship images of creatures are without excuse. The turn from God to idolatry, in Paul's account, produces a series of consequences: God gave them up to the desires of their hearts, to the degrading of their bodies, to dishonorable passions, and finally to a debased mind and a list of wrongs — twenty-one specific items in the Greek — that reads as a comprehensive catalog of human vice. The chapter ends by naming not just those who do such things but those who approve of those who practice them. The indictment is broad enough to reach everyone.
- Romans 1Chapter 1 is the opening of a long letter to a community Paul did not found and has not yet visited.
- Romans 2Chapter 2 is the turn in Paul's argument.
- Romans 3Chapter 3 is the hinge of the letter's first movement.
- Romans 4Chapter 4 is Paul's exegetical demonstration of justification by faith, built entirely from the figure of Abraham.
- Romans 5Chapter 5 opens the second major movement of the letter (chapters 5-8), which draws out the consequences of the justification argued in chapters 1-4.
- Romans 6Chapter 6 opens with Paul's most pointed rhetorical question: Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? The question follows logically from the last verse of chapter 5, where he said grace abounds where sin increases, and it is the objection he expects.
- Romans 7Chapter 7 addresses the role of the law in the new life.
- Romans 8Chapter 8 is the climax Paul has been building toward since chapter 1.
- Romans 9Chapter 9 opens the three-chapter meditation on Israel — the hardest sustained argument in the letter.
- Romans 10Chapter 10 continues the argument of chapter 9 but shifts from divine sovereignty to human responsibility.
- Romans 11Chapter 11 brings the three-chapter meditation on Israel to its resolution.
- Romans 12Chapter 12 opens the practical movement of the letter with the word therefore, gathering everything from chapters 1-11 into a single imperative.
- Romans 13Chapter 13 contains the verses that have generated more controversy in the history of Romans' reception than any other passage in the letter.
- Romans 14Chapter 14 addresses a concrete dispute in the Roman church.
- Romans 15Chapter 15 continues directly from chapter 14.
- Romans 16Chapter 16 is the longest closing greeting in any of Paul's letters.