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Romans

Romanschapter 1

32 verses · BSBRomans book hub →

Speaks with:Romans 1×61 Corinthians 1×3Ephesians 1×3Romans 16×3Romans 15×2Titus 1×2

Summary

Chapter summary

Paul greets the Roman saints and unveils his theme: the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for Jew first and also Greek. Humanity's descent is traced. The truth suppressed, the Creator exchanged for images, God giving men over to the passions they chose. The wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness. Henry reads the chapter as a moral charge-sheet; Calvin marks that even the heathen are without excuse because the knowledge of God was given them. The courtroom is set; the gospel's necessity is proven.

Context

Epistle · Paul — Romans overview

  • A. 1–7 Paul, a Servant Called to the Gospel of God
  • B. 8–17 I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel
  • C. 18–23 Truth Held Down: They Traded the Glory of God
  • D. 24–32 God Gave Them Up: The Long Slide Downward

The outline

  1. A.Paul, a Servant Called to the Gospel of Godvv. 1 to 7

    Read vv. 1 to 7 →

  2. B.I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospelvv. 8 to 17

    Read vv. 8 to 17 →

  3. C.Truth Held Down: They Traded the Glory of Godvv. 18 to 23

    Read vv. 18 to 23 →

  4. D.God Gave Them Up: The Long Slide Downwardvv. 24 to 32

    Read vv. 24 to 32 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The just shall live by his faith

Pattern

Habakkuk asked God why judgment tarried and was told to write the answer plainly: the just shall live by his faith. The New Testament quotes the sentence three times, as the thesis of Romans, the proof in Galatians that no man is justified by the law, and the anchor of endurance in Hebrews.

One sentence from a short prophet carries the doctrine of justification by faith. Luther's own account of his awakening runs through Romans 1:17, and the church has read the verse as the gospel in miniature ever since.

  1. Habakkuk 2:4

    The sentence given to the watchman

    Habakkuk, waiting on his watch for God's answer, receives it: the just shall live by his faith.

  2. Romans 1:17 you are here

    The thesis of Romans

    Paul sets the sentence at the head of his fullest statement of the gospel.

  3. Galatians 3:11

    No man justified by the law

  4. Hebrews 10:38

    Faith holding on under trial

    Hebrews quotes the verse to a church tempted to draw back.

The world behind this chapter

Romans 1
When
Nero's early reign, written from Corinth · c. AD 57
Where
A letter opening addressed to believers in the capital, in a city crowded with temples, altars, and imported gods.
Who first heard it
House churches in Rome — Gentile believers in the majority, with Jewish believers returning after years of exile — who had never met the man writing to them.

The history

Ancient letters opened with a fixed formula: sender, recipient, greeting. Paul takes that one-line convention and stretches it over seven verses, packing his credentials and his gospel into the space where a normal letter said "Paul to the Romans, greetings." A first hearer would notice the swelling immediately.

He had never been to Rome, which changes the tone of everything. He is introducing himself to a church he did not found, hoping for their backing on a journey further west, and he is careful to say he wants to be encouraged by them as well as to strengthen them.

The moral picture he draws in the second half was not exaggeration to anyone living there. Roman writers themselves — satirists and moralists alike — complained about the same excesses, and the city's religion filled temples with images of gods in human and animal form. Paul's argument is that the problem is worship pointed at the wrong object, and everything else follows from that.

What it meant to them

For Gentile believers in the capital of the world, being told they were included in a gospel promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures placed them inside a story far older than Rome.

And the claim that this message was the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, set the agenda of the whole letter. Both groups were in the room, and Paul was going to address both without letting either one feel superior.

Sources cited

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Romans 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 5 · Bookends: the same words open and close

BOOK-LEVEL. Paul's 'obedience of faith' (hypakoe pisteos) stands at the virtual beginning and end of Romans - a verbatim Greek-phrase frame around the letter's argument.

Romans 16:26→

but now revealed and made known through the writings of the prophets by the command of the eternal God, in order to lead all nations to the obedience that comes from faith—

Grace Evangelical Society 'The Obedience Which Is Faith'; STEPBible TAGNT; ASV/WEB text

v. 20 · A guardrail on the theme

General revelation shows God's everlasting power and divinity - and, per Faulkner, nothing about the way of salvation; the honest limit on what the stars reveal.

Psalms 19:1→

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Ps 19:1; Rom 1:20 (ASV); Faulkner, ARJ 6 (2013)

This page draws on E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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