After the Apostle Paul introduces himself to the Roman Christians, he sets forth to discuss his purpose for writing to them, as well as God’s plan for the salvation of both the Jews and the Gentiles.
But, before he discusses those topics, he briefly demonstrates his prayer life by first thanking God for the Christians in Rome and their testimony before a corrupt Roman world fraught with all kinds of immorality and idolatry. They were standing sure and Paul wanted to encourage them to keep on keeping on. Today’s Christians would serve themselves well by paying attention to both Paul and the Roman’s examples in prayer and steadfastness.
Paul, though, wants to visit the Roman church; one that not he, Peter, nor any of other apostles had any part in establishing. He wanted to impart an undefined spiritual gift, as well as partake in one. His indebtedness to both the cultured Romans, as well as the simpleton, in the subject of the gospel, is another example that modern-day Christianity could take heed.
It is verses 16 and 17, which some have called the “thesis” of the Roman letter that Paul will spend the rest of he effort explaining. For not only is the gospel or Jesus the “power of God for salvation,” in the gospel or Jesus is found God’s righteousness. And only by depending upon God, shall a person called by God, live. By embracing that reality, the Christian’s mind can be put at ease concerning not only his relationship with God, but also his relationship with a world lost in its suppression of the truth about God.
The following Bible study session unpacks what Paul has laid out here in these few verses that are often overlooked or hurried past to get to what some might seem to be more interesting or relevant.
