Romans 1 Study Notes

1:1 Paul was an apostle by the call of God. In God’s summons of Paul from his previous way of life, he commissioned him as an apostle (Ac 9). Paul had been assigned by God to proclaim and teach the good news about Jesus Christ—the gospel of God.

1:2 The good news is the fulfillment of the OT prophecies, and the OT is not correctly understood apart from the NT.

1:3 Jesus is God’s Son in a different sense than are Christians, who become children of God due to spiritual new birth (Jn 3) and adoption into God’s family (Rm 8:15). Jesus is God’s Son first by being the eternal Son and Second Person of the Trinity (Is 9:6; Gl 4:4), and second by being the virgin-born incarnate Son, conceived as the Spirit came to Mary (Lk 1:35). Jesus was also the messianic Son who came in the family line of David (2Sm 7:12-16; Ps 2:6-7; 89:26-29,36). Flesh here means the real human nature of Jesus.

1:4 Jesus in his humiliation was despised and rejected (Is 53:3) and had the form of a servant (Php 2:7). He spoke as the Son of the Father (Jn 5:19-23), but he was persecuted because “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God” (Jn 5:18). At the cross, his sonship was called into question (Mt 27:39-43). But the Spirit of holiness (another title for the Holy Spirit) raised Jesus from the dead. This event testified that he was as God’s unique Son exalted over death and Satan, and invested with all power (Mt 28:18).

1:5 The obedience of faith (cp. 10:16; 15:18) is best understood as the faith that issues in obedience. Paul’s ministry sought to bring all the Gentiles to obey Jesus and his Father.

1:6 Christians are called by Jesus. This calling is not a mere invitation. It is instead a sovereign summons that results in salvation as people respond in faith. By this language Paul reminded the Roman believers that God took the initiative in saving them.

1:7 Called as saints does not mean called “to be” saints, as if this is something Christians might become in the future. Neither does it signify an honorary title or an unusually holy person. Rather, all Christians are saints by the sovereign call of God. They have been set apart just as the nation of Israel was set apart (Lv 11:44; 19:2). Christians are those who have the forgiveness of sins and are sanctified by faith in Jesus (Ac 26:18) and therefore are “saints” (1Co 1:2). The Christian belongs to Jesus and is set apart from the world.

1:8 It was common in ancient letters to begin with a prayer. Paul adopted the form, but his prayers were never just formal. As there is joy among the angels at the conversion of one sinner (Lk 15:10), Paul rejoiced over the fact that there were house churches in the capital city of the Roman Empire. He was thankful for the spread of the faith.

1:9-10 Paul continually prayed for the Roman Christians in his spirit. Though too often perceived as otherwise, prayer is just as necessary as teaching or preaching in Christian ministry. Paul had wanted to come to Rome, but God was in control of all his circumstances. The believer must seek God’s will in his activities (Jms 4:13-17).

1:11-12 Paul was sure he would bring certain benefits or blessings as he taught among the house churches of Rome. The spiritual gift mentioned here was not the special gift(s) in 1Co 12-14 which were given by God (1Co 12:11) but gifts that Christians gave to one another. Paul was certain that the Roman Christians would minister to him since every part of the body of Christ has useful functions in relation to other parts (1Co 12:12-27).

1:13 How is it that the most important city in the world had not yet had a visit from an apostle? Why especially had the “apostle to the Gentiles” (11:13) not come? Paul often planned to come, but these plans had not come to fruition. In the mysterious providence of God it all worked out for the best. After all, Paul’s delay in fulfilling his trip to Rome caused him to write this wonderful letter. Furthermore, he eventually went to Rome as a prisoner (Ac 25:10-28:16), spending two years in the city preaching the gospel “without hindrance” (Ac 28:31). Believers must learn that God works out events in ways we could never imagine (Rm 8:28).

1:14 Paul’s conversion placed a special commission and obligation on him (Ac 9:15; 13:47; 1Co 9:16; Gl 2:8-9). The revelations granted to him gave him greater responsibility. His training and Roman citizenship equipped him to reach all varieties of pagans, including the educated and the barbarians. These barbarians included people from Spain and Asia Minor (Ac 14:11-18).

1:15 Paul was eager to fulfill his obligation because he expected God to do great things through his ministry.

1:16 Why might someone be ashamed of the gospel? On the surface, the gospel seems like a very strange message. It is about a Jewish carpenter and teacher who was put to death on a cross by Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea in AD 26-36. The message says that this man Jesus was raised from the dead and is now Lord—the (Gk) kurios. This title was used of God in the Greek Bible and was applied to the emperor by some Romans. Paul himself wrote that this message seemed foolish to Gentiles (1Co 1:23) and was a stumbling block to Jews. A crucified Messiah seemed to be a contradiction in terms to the Jews. A crucified Jew seemed like foolishness to the Romans, who despised Jews in general. Anyone who was crucified was considered among the lowest members of society. Paul had no confidence in his rhetorical skills to overcome the human objections to the message, but he knew the power of the Spirit to change the lives of people as they heard the good news about Jesus’s death and resurrection. People are saved by faith, but faith is not the cause of salvation. The cause of salvation is the grace of God, the will of God, and the power of God working through the message.

1:17 The righteousness of God was the core of Paul’s message. Martin Luther came to better understand God’s grace as he studied this verse in the original Greek rather than in the Latin translation. It forever changed his view of God. God’s righteousness can be understood in several ways. First, God always does what is right and can be said to have righteousness as one of his attributes (Dt 32:4; Ps 119:142). Second, since God always does what is right, his actions or activities are sometimes identified as his righteousness (Is 45:8; 46:13; 51:5-6,8; 56:1). Third, God’s righteousness is as a gift from him to us, justifying us in his sight. “Justification” is a courtroom term signifying that a judge declares a person to be “right” or “just.” Augustine wrote, “The righteousness of God is that righteousness which he imparts in order to make men righteous” (Spirit and the Letter, chap. 16). In the gospel, God reveals his righteousness (his nature, his activity, and his gift of right status) by faith. In the course of this letter, Paul will explain how God is able to declare sinners to be righteous because of Jesus’s work on the cross. From faith to faith emphasizes that the entire process of being declared righteous comes to us from start to finish by faith.

1:18 All people need the gospel because they are under God’s wrath, which stems from his holy revulsion to sin. Paul wrote this letter from the Greek city of Corinth—a city full of idolatry and immorality. Humankind originally knew God and fellowshiped with him (Gn 3:8a). The history of the world and of the OT reveals a subsequent regression and loss of moral knowledge. Since the garden of Eden, people have been unrighteous, and they have suppressed the truth.

1:19 God as Creator has disclosed himself in creation. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands” (Ps 19:1; cp. Ac 14:15-17). People also have an innate capacity for God as well as a moral conscience. God is at work to show himself in the world, yet the world is in rebellion against him.

1:20 Humanity’s problem is not that they don’t know the truth. The history of the human race discloses a determined effort to oppose the will of God. People are without excuse for their idolatry and practical atheism.

1:21 Because of human willfulness, people’s knowledge of God became clouded and their thinking became darkened. Without contact with God, the human heart loses contact with reality, misses the purpose of one’s existence, ignores God, and becomes ungrateful. People are supposed to glorify God as God but instead find all sorts of created objects to worship. Part of the wrath of God is revealed in humanity’s loss of intelligent thinking.

1:22 A classic example of human foolishness is found in Is 44:9-20 where human cleverness ends in stupidity.

1:23 Many people think that the history of religion developed along an evolutionary model. In this view, humanity originally held animistic beliefs and then progressed to polytheism, to tribal deities, and then to a single creator God. From there we progressed to a vague philosophical monotheism in the Enlightenment, and finally we are now embracing atheism in the age of science. But this is not true to the early history of religion. Instead of starting in polytheism, the Bible says humanity started with knowledge of the one true God and then declined into polytheism as humans were separated from God and fractured from one another. Paul warns that loss of knowledge of the true God resulted in the worship of images resembling mortal man. Even in the modern age we have seen dictators worshiped as gods, and the Bible says this sin will be repeated climactically in the end times (2Th 2:3-12; Rv 13:1-18).

1:24 Because they rejected the truths of God revealed in creation, God punished the Greco-Roman world by delivering them to the desires of their hearts. A similar scenario played out in the life of King Ahab of Israel, who continually rebelled against God (1Kg 16:29-33). As a judgment, God permitted a lying prophetic spirit to deceive Ahab to his doom (1Kg 22:22-23). The ancients were enmeshed in polytheistic idolatry, and in their devotions to their false gods they practiced all sorts of immorality.

1:25 The loss of the knowledge of God in the mind and heart leads to an exchange of the truth for a lie. Something created is served and worshiped rather than the Creator, and judgment is the result (Ps 81:12; Ac 7:42).

1:26-27 Lesbians and homosexuals often argue that this verse only prohibits sexual abuse of children, or else they say that natural sexual relations are not violated when men and women who are born with a tendency for homosexual desires (as they claim) practice homosexuality. But Paul clearly says sexual relations between members of the same sex are unnatural, and the Bible elsewhere strictly prohibits all homosexuality (e.g., Lv 18:22). The Creator intended male and female to be joined in marriage (Gn 2:24). As an example of the sort of sexual perversion Paul would have been aware of in his day, the emperor Nero castrated a boy named Sporus and married him. Such disgraceful passions result in appropriate penalty.

1:28-32 In v. 24 God is described as delivering society to impurity, in v. 26 to degrading passions, and in v. 28 to a corrupt mind. The mind becomes (Gk) adokimos (disqualified), an untrustworthy guide in moral choices because people have rejected knowledge of God. Verses 29-31 contain a list of vices similar to ancient vice lists. Pagan moralists often lamented the loss of virtue in their societies. Paul’s list of sins was no darker than what other writers of that time reported. All sin is serious. Lesbian and homosexual practices may seem particularly objectionable, but any of the twenty-one sins listed (cp. Gl 5:19-21) cut people off from the life of God and bring spiritual death. When society applauds others who practice these sins, it has lost its moral compass. Ancient philosophers warned about the social effects of popular plays. Murder and immorality were so common on stage that people no longer reacted when they occurred in daily life. Modern entertainments have a similar effect on minds and the values that guide behavior.