Beauty in the Book: Romans 1
Themes
This chapter of Romans touches on themes of obedience in faith, holiness, the inclusivity of the Gospel, generous salvation, and the nature of God’s wrath.
Questions
This chapter addresses the following questions:
Who is the good news of Jesus available to?
Are all people accountable to knowing God’s truth?
What makes one deserving of God’s wrath?
Moving Forward
This writing will break down the chapter section-by-section, offering commentary for your reflection. Don’t miss the ending titled Beauty in the Book where it all gets wrapped up in a bow—highlighting how every chapter is woven with uplifting realities of God’s goodness and grace.
Romans 1:1-7
Did you know that when God calls people into faith, he’s calling them to belong to Jesus Christ? It is an invitation of belonging. Of kinship. Of security. Of familiy.
Furthermore, it’s an invitation held out by grace. That means that this decadent belonging you’re invited to be a part of, isn’t according to your own ability to perform or get things right, but is due to the generous mercy of The Almighty God, who sets his sights upon you while you’re still tangled in transgression and he beckons you to step forward, deeper, further with Him until your life aligns with his ways more-and-more. (Romans 5:8)
His ways are good, fruitful, transformative, and pure. They are starkly different than society’s methods and cause his people to be disturbingly set apart. I don’t mean disturbing in the general sense of the word, but in the sense that when someone encounters a Christian for the first time—there is a disturbance, an impact, a shaking of the status quo. The world might call it disturbance anyways, but we as Christians—we know its proper title—holiness. There is a distinguishable“different-ness” to the one who belongs to Jesus.
In verses 1-7, we see this concept alluded to several times:
Verse 1: Paul describes his calling to be set apart for the Gospel of God.
Verse 5: He describes the grace he received to call the non-Jewish people (Gentiles) to the obedience of faith for the sake of Jesus’ name.
Verse 6: He addresses the folks in Rome, those who are among the Gentiles, and reminds them of their calling to belong to Jesus Christ.
He then offers a wide-sweeping address to all in Rome who are loved by God, and called to be his holy people.
There is this deeply-rooted theme of calling, holiness, and grace that welcomes us into the book of Romans. May it stir you to remember the invitation of belonging held out to you today— to step deeper into the people of God and into God’s transformative ways, according to his grace, and for the glory of his name.
Romans 1:8-15
Carrying a tone of love forward, Paul speaks to the church in Rome in a very pastoral way. He describes his diligent prayers for the church, along with a desire to see them face-to-face.Like a loving “spiritual father”, he commends their active faith and expresses gratitude to God for it.
Carrying along, he proclaims his mission to share the good news of righteousness by faith alone to both those who come from a jewish descent… and to those who don’t (labeled here as “Gentiles"). It’s also worth noting that Paul is writing to a collection of people familiar with Greek wisdom and shares that this gospel he proclaims isn’t just for the wise and learned of this world—aka the Greeks—but for the foolish as well.
It seems Paul wants to make it perfectly clear right out of the gate that having a certain background isn’t a prerequisite for this news he’s sharing, and he drives that stake into the ground ahead…
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 1:16-17 are power verses, and some even describe them as a sort of “thesis statement” for the entire book of Romans:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
It might seem strange to our modern ears to consider that one might be “ashamed” of the Gospel, especially in a letter written to a religious community, but as you may have heard before, the gospel of grace can be considered downright scandalous.
“The scandal of grace” is an attention-grabbing phrase that you may have caught floating around various Christian writings. I understand “the scandal of grace” to capture the idea of the shock that occurs when something extravagant is given without merit, to the undeserving. The very nature of this scandal is sure to offend those feel they have established a stake in their own self-righteous standing.
For those readers Paul addresses who come from strict moral backgrounds—according to Greek morality and philosophy, or to zealous, law-keeping Jews—the message of grace was sure to push the envelope and provoke strong reaction.
But Paul holds fast to this: he is unashamed to share of the grace that he believes most fully offers salvation to both Greeks and Jews alike.
Here Paul is—boldly and unashamedly—telling his listeners that this gospel saves. It saves them according to God’s righteousness, which is given by faith.
Romans 1:18-32
What feels like a staunch pivot is actually an organic Segway, as Paul breaks in topically to the reality of God’s wrath.
On one hand, it might feel like making a 180° from the positive topic of salvation to the negative topic of wrath, but on the other hand, if one is bringing up the notion of salvation, an organic question that might be asked next is: but what are we being saved from?
Cue: a discussion of God’s wrath.
There’s so much beauty hiding in this controversial topic (you can actually find a full blog post on it here), but here’s where I’ll begin for today’s purposes: God’s wrath is as sensible as it is rooted in freedom. What I mean by that, is that as you continue reading from verses 18-32, you’ll see that God’s wrath is a simply “giving over” of people to what they choose for themselves. Note these instances:
Verse 19-21: The truth about God has been made plain to all people. But people chose to reject it.
Verse 22: God gives them over to the false notions and fake idols they choose to embrace.
Verse 24: God gives people over to the sinful desires in their own hearts and the despicable lusts they wanted. Consequently, they receive the consequence for their error.
Verse 28-31: God gives people over to the depravity of their minds, and they naturally come to embrace all things wicked.
And yet, because of his incredible mercy—because of who He is—God never wanted any of this for mankind. Just as he freely gives people over to the evil that they choose for themselves and judges them according to their free choice, he also freely offers salvation to any one who turns to him.
And that option—option number two—is the one he wants for everyone. He wants them all to choose repentance, and to turn to him!
…he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9 NIV
He offers saving grace through the person of Jesus to Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, non-Greeks… to anyone who desires a life with him.
The righteous will live by faith. The righteous will live as they surrender their pride and their ideas that they can do this whole life-thing according to their own independent knowledge and wisdom. They will live as they trust God—trust in his ways through-and-through, culminating in his gererous way of offering salvation through the person of Jesus.
God’s wrath is rooted in his desire to let people come to him freely.
His judgement is rooted in justice—according to what is right and fair, in accordance with people’s free choices.
And most importantly, his gospel is rooted in love, so that an unmerited salvation is offered to anyone that places their faith in Jesus’ name.
Beauty in the Book
While it might sound harsh reading about God’s wrath, there is actually a lot of beauty we learn about his character through these descriptions. We see that he isn’t willing to control us. Anyone who has ever been in a controlling relationship knows the soul-crushing nature of it. God invites us to come to him freely, not by a means of control.
Furthermore, we see his generous nature to offer salvation to everyone. He isn’t a wishy-washy God; he has firm stances on what’s good and true, and while the reality of our ability to turn away from him freely in our actions leaves us deserving of his judgement, his steadfast love for us caused him to make a way out for us—even when we were in deadset rebellion against him.
These people described in the section on wrath (and spoiler alert—we’ve all been these people) sound awful… and so, when we hold that in balance with the reality that this is the state we were in when God sent his very own son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin, his incredible mercy is emphasized. There is no one like our God.
He is eternally righteous, unmatchably just, and amazingly rich in love and mercy.
May we rest in these aspects of who he is when we feel painfully aware of our own sin or question if he even wants us. We see here that while the depravity of our humanity is real, the good news of his salvation through faith eclipses our sin, and he leads us on a journey towards holiness according to his benevolent mercy—for the sake of his Good Name. Praise the Lord!
