Book Intro › Paul’s Letters

Romans

Πρὸς Ῥωμαίους Pros Rhōmaious, “to the Romans”. Letter. 16 chapters, 434 verses.

Paul’s fullest account of the gospel, written to a church he had never visited: all have sinned, God puts people right through faith, and Jew and Gentile belong together in one people.

Read Romans 1 →

Overview

Romans is the longest of Paul’s letters. Paul writes to believers in Rome, a church he did not found, to introduce himself before a visit he hopes will lead on to Spain (15:24). He states his theme early: the Good News “is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek” (1:16). He argues that Gentiles and Jews alike stand guilty before God, “for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23). God’s righteousness, he says, comes as a gift received through faith, and Abraham is his great example.

Chapters 5–8 describe the life that follows: peace with God, freedom from the rule of sin, the struggle with the flesh and life in the Spirit, ending with the claim that nothing can “separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39). Chapters 9–11 face the question the argument raises. If the Messiah came to Israel, why have most of his own people not believed? The last chapters turn to practice, from presenting “your bodies a living sacrifice” (12:1) to relations between the strong and the weak, and close with travel plans and greetings.

Author and date

The letter names Paul as its author (1:1), and the scribe who wrote it down, Tertius, adds his own greeting (16:22). It is among the letters almost all scholars accept as Paul’s.

Scholarly consensus

Paul · c. AD 56–58 · from Corinth

Paul wrote during his three months in Greece (Acts 20:2–3), as he prepared to take a collection to the poor in Jerusalem (15:25–26). He commends Phoebe of Cenchreae, Corinth’s port, who probably carried the letter (16:1), and sends greetings from Gaius and Erastus, both names linked with Corinth (16:23).

Scholars debate the letter’s ending. Some think chapter 16, with its many names, was first sent elsewhere, perhaps to Ephesus. The closing doxology, a short burst of praise to God, also appears in different places in different manuscripts. The World English Bible prints it after 14:23, as 14:24–26.

Audience and setting

The church in Rome was well established when Paul wrote, and no one knows who founded it. Its Jewish and Gentile believers met in households, one of them the home of Prisca and Aquila (16:5). Around AD 49 the emperor Claudius had expelled Jews from Rome, this couple among them (Acts 18:2), but by now they were back. Many scholars read the letter’s concern for unity between Jew and Gentile, and between the strong and the “weak in faith” (14:1), against that background.

Genre, and how to read it

Romans moves by question and answer. Paul often raises an objection in the voice of an imagined partner and replies to it, a teaching style ancient writers called diatribe. The main argument runs from 1:18 to the praise that closes chapter 11 (11:33); chapters 12–16 apply it.

Augustine’s conversion turned on 13:13–14, and Luther found in 1:17 the key to his understanding of grace. Readers still differ on what Paul means by “the works of the law” (3:28), and on whether “faith in Jesus Christ” (3:22) means faith placed in Christ or Christ’s own faithfulness. Since the 1970s, a group of scholars known as the new perspective on Paul have read his debates about the law as chiefly about the practices that marked out God’s people. Others keep the Reformation reading: the letter is about how a sinner is accepted by God. Both readings have many followers.

Paul’s letters, longest first

The New Testament does not put Paul’s letters in the order he wrote them. It puts them in two runs, letters to churches and then letters to individuals, and within each run the longest comes first. Measured in the site’s Greek text, only one letter breaks the pattern.

  1. To churches Romans to 2 Thessalonians
  2. Romans 7,100 Greek words
  3. 1 Corinthians 6,820 Greek words
  4. 2 Corinthians 4,469 Greek words
  5. Galatians 2,228 Greek words
  6. Ephesians 2,419 Greek words
  7. Philippians 1,630 Greek words
  8. Colossians 1,575 Greek words
  9. 1 Thessalonians 1,473 Greek words
  10. 2 Thessalonians 822 Greek words
  11. To individuals 1 Timothy to Philemon
  12. 1 Timothy 1,588 Greek words
  13. 2 Timothy 1,237 Greek words
  14. Titus 658 Greek words
  15. Philemon 335 Greek words
  16. After the thirteen names no author
  17. Hebrews 4,955 Greek words
The one exception

Galatians (2,228 Greek words) stands before the longer Ephesians (2,419), and it is shorter by letters too (11,082 against 11,989), so it is not a matter of how words are counted. In the WEB’s English, Galatians comes out a little longer, so the exception only shows in Greek. Nothing in the letters explains the order; it belongs to the collection, not to the letters themselves.

Greek words counted in the Nestle 1904 text the site uses. Hebrews, which does not name its author, comes after the thirteen that name Paul, though it is longer than all but two of them.

As it is written

Paul argues from scripture, and his formula for it is gegraptai, it is written. Romans uses it 16 times, more than any other book of the New Testament and more than half of all Paul’s 31. Ten of them come in chapters 9–15, where he turns to Israel and the nations. His sources are mostly Isaiah and the Psalms.

  1. Matthew 9
  2. Mark 7
  3. Luke 9
  4. John 2
  5. Acts 5
  6. Romans 16
  7. 1 Corinthians 9
  8. 2 Corinthians 2
  9. Galatians 4
  10. Hebrews 1
  11. 1 Peter 1
  12. Revelation 2

67 in the New Testament, counted in the site’s Greek; Paul’s letters are shaded.

  1. 1:17 But the righteous shall live by faith Habakkuk 2:4
  2. 2:24 the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you Isaiah 52:5
  3. 3:4 that you might be justified in your words Psalm 51:4
  4. 3:10 There is no one righteous; no, not one Psalm 14:1
  5. 4:17 I have made you a father of many nations Genesis 17:5
  6. 8:36 For your sake we are killed all day long Psalm 44:22
  7. 9:13 Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated Malachi 1:2
  8. 9:33 Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense Isaiah 28:16
  9. 10:15 How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News of peace Isaiah 52:7
  10. 11:8 God gave them a spirit of stupor Deuteronomy 29:4
  11. 11:26 There will come out of Zion the Deliverer Isaiah 59:20
  12. 12:19 Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord Deuteronomy 32:35
  13. 14:11 to me every knee will bow Isaiah 45:23
  14. 15:3 The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me Psalm 69:9
  15. 15:9 Therefore I will give praise to you among the Gentiles Psalm 18:49
  16. 15:21 They will see, to whom no news of him came Isaiah 52:15

Only the quotations Paul introduces with “it is written”; he quotes scripture many more times without it. 3:10 opens a chain of quotations that runs to 3:18; 9:33 joins Isaiah 28:16 to 8:14; 11:8 draws on Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10.

Outline

The gospel explained (1–11)

The gospel lived (12–16)

Key themes

The righteousness of God
In the Good News “is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith” (1:17), and “a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (3:28), as Abraham was (4:3).
Sin and grace
Sin “entered into the world through one man” (5:12), and Paul sets Adam and Christ side by side to show grace outrunning it, for “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).
Life in the Spirit
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). The Spirit makes believers God’s children, crying “Abba! Father!” (8:15).
Israel and the nations
Paul feels “great sorrow and unceasing pain” (9:2) for his people, pictures Gentile believers as branches grafted into Israel’s olive tree (11:17), and looks to the day when “all Israel will be saved” (11:26), words readers interpret differently. The Covenants page follows the covenant Paul quotes in 11:27.
One body
Believers “who are many, are one body in Christ” (12:5), and are to “accept one another, even as Christ also accepted you” (15:7).

At a glance

55 people and 11 places named.

Most mentioned: Jesus Christ, Abraham, Isaiah, Moses, David

Main places: Jerusalem, Rome, Spain, Achaia, Asia