PRECEPT STUDY
ROMANS PART 1 - LECTURE 3
The Setting and Overview of Romans
INTRODUCTION. Not too long ago I was on a plane—that’s kind of a common occurrence in my life these days—but I was on a plane. I asked them if they would please give me an empty seat next to me because I find that my time is so crammed with responsibilities. Many times when I get on a plane I have writing to do, correspondence to answer or something to read and I just needed a little breathing space. I got on a plane and I sat down on an aisle seat and next to the window was a businessman. He looked at me and smiled and I smiled at him and opened my Bible and began to study but at the same time praying and saying, “Father, if you want me to witness to this man, if this is of You, if this is going to be profitable then you just open the door.” And as the plane took off—I love to take off on a plane—I just lean back and it reminds me of walking in the Spirit—you know the aerodynamics of the Spirit that take over—that gravity pull of the flesh—so I just lean back and enjoy it each time. We got in the air and he began to take to me. And as I began to in that conversation, look for God’s opening to share the gospel of Jesus Christ He threw the door open. And as I talked to this man—oh yes, he was a Christian—oh yes he did go to church occasionally—oh yes he did believe in God—but more and more as I probed I found out that there was no righteousness in his life. There was a knowledge of the Truth of the person and the work of Jesus Christ, but there was no changed life to show that the gospel had really taken root in his life. So I laid my Bible on the empty seat between us and I kept saying to him (and I’m trying to remember his name—he’s on my prayer list and I’ve just forgotten it) and I kept saying, “But look at what it says here. But look at what it says here. But look at what it says here. But look at what it says here.” And we were just flipping all over the Word of God. Before I got off the plane, I looked at him and said, “I just want you to know that I believe that this has been a divine appointment. I do not believe that it is any accident.” And he says, “I believe the same thing also.” And I said, “And I want you to know and I want to tell you in all gentleness you are lost. You don’t have a true Christianity. You are lost and you are dying and you are going to go to hell. And you are going to be one of those people that stands before God and says, “Lord, Lord.” And He’ll say, “But I never knew you because you do not do the will of the Father who is in heaven.” He was not offended at all—God’s taught me how to say it gently—how to tell a man or a woman that they are going to hell in a gentle way…But God’s taught me how to say it and he was not offended. I wrote him a letter and he wrote back and he said, “You know, I have been thinking very much about our conversation,” and he says, “I have started to read the Word of God to see if what you are saying is really true about me and you’ll hear from me.” We have in our hands in the Book of Romans the most concise, precise, thorough explanation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what I want to do in this lesson is to give you an overview of this whole Book. I want to give it to you in such a way that you will remember it and never forget it so that if you ever find yourself at any time able to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, you will know at least one book of the Bible and I know many of you because of who you are and because of your hunger for the Word you know far more…but for those of you who are new to studying the word of God that you will have one book of the Bible that you will know how to handle in an accurate way and in a thorough way so that you can show a person the righteousness of God that is revealed from faith to faith that belongs to every true child of God. And I’m going to show it to you in such a way that if you will cooperate with me in this lesson you’ll see why you have to cooperate later on—but if you will cooperate with me in this lesson I promise you that years later you will know every segment division of Romans in a practical way so you can flip open that book and explain the gospel to a person wherever they are in their understanding of Jesus Christ. So that’s what’s coming but before we go there what I want to do is I want to put Romans in the perspective of the whole New Testament.
BOOK CATEGORIES OF NEW TESTAMENT.And what I want to show you as you look at the New Testament we find that the books general fall into three categories. There are the historical books which are the four gospels and Acts. And then there are the epistles and those are the Pauline Epistles and the general epistles—now by “general” epistles we mean epistles that were written by other people. If you’ve studied How to Study your Bible Precept Upon Precept you know that an epistle is a letter. And then the third category of New Testament books is the apocalyptic or the visions and it’s just one book and it’s the Book of Revelation. Now when we look at the epistles and this is what we want to look for just a minute, we see Paul's journey epistles—the epistles that Paul wrote during his first, second or third missionary journeys and we have touched on those already. And then we see his prison epistles. Now his prison epistles were written while he was incarcerated or while he was under a house arrest in Rome and this was his first imprisonment. Some people believe that Paul was only in prison one time, but I think a thorough study of Paul’s epistles you will see that there were two imprisonments. The first imprisonment is described in Philippians where Paul says it is more needful for him to remain here than to go home although his heart’s desire is to go home and the Lord has revealed to him that he is going to remain here on earth. In 2 Timothy which is his personal epistle we find Paul saying that God has shown him that the time of his departure is at hand. So I believe there were two imprisonments of Paul. We find then his pastoral epistles and those were the epistles written to Timothy and Titus and 2 Timothy was written at the very end of his ministry just before he was decapitated. And we feel that he was decapitated in Rome. And then we find the general epistles and these are Hebrews and James, 1 and 2 Peter and 1, 2 and 3 John and the Book of Jude. And then as I said the visions or the Book of Revelation and apocalypse. Now if you want to look at it in another way—these are charts from Irving Jensen’s work—Irving Jensen is the man that God used the most significant way in my life because he is the one that God used to show me really how to study the word of God. I got a hold of his book, Independent Bible Study, when I was on the mission field and I began to devour that thing and try and figure it out—not that it was that complicated, it’s just I’m a little slow—and began to put these things into practice. So I would say that if you wanted to go back to the man that God used the most to bring Precept Upon Precept into existence it would be Dr. Irving Jensen and I would suggest that you get his three books of overlays and charts that cover the survey of the Old and New Testament and then cover the Old Testament and then over the New Testament. But this is the progressive editions of Paul’s epistle to the canon of the New Testament—and by the canon of the New Testament we mean those books that they felt were to be included in the word of God as part of the word of God. You see that he has his travel epistles and we see that Romans is written on the third journey. And the main subjects of his travel epistles, Irving Jensen feels, is salvation at the present and in the future. So when he’s talking about salvation I want you to understand that salvation is not just the day that you get saved, but there is a salvation from the penalty of sin and that happens on the day that you get saved but there’s a salvation from the power of sin and that is day by day as you live walking in the Spirit and not by the flesh. And then some day there is a present tense salvation from the presence of sin and that’s when you get your brand new body. Now I’m going to give you all that later so don’t worry about it. But the general purposes in these books was evangelizing. Then you move to Paul’s prison epistles and those written during his first Roman imprisonment and you have that the main subjects—now this is the main subjects—are Christ and the Christian life. And the general purpose of that is edification. These were all written to churches. Then you move down to the pastoral epistles. And 1 timothy and Titus were written during Paul’s release from prison—in that interim period between his first imprisonment and his second imprisonment. They were written to Timothy and Titus who were two of his traveling companions and two to whom he turned over his ministry. These are individuals—these are written to individuals and their main subjects are the Church and its workers and the purpose of these is to establish the people in the way the Church life is to be handled. And then in the second Roman imprisonment we find him writing 2 Timothy and that’s his personal farewell. If you have not taken our 2 Timothy course I cannot tell you how great it is—I just love that book.
FOUNDING OF CHURCH AT ROME/HISTORICAL SETTING. Now what we want to do is look at the historical setting of Romans. We want to look at the historical setting of Romans. The first thing that I want to do is to talk to you about the founding of the church at Rome. There’s no record of who founded this church. There’s no record. Peter did not found the church at Rome. He was not the one that established the church at Rome as far as we know. Some people will say that, but there’s no record of it. If you would go to Acts 2:10 however you get a glimpse in how that church might have come into being. In Acts 2 we have the account of the day of Pentecost. Pentecost was one of the feasts—the annual feasts that the Jews celebrated. At the feast of Pentecost what God was doing—the priest on that day would come out and take two loaves of bread and he would wave them before the people. And when God inaugurated this feast way back in the Book of Leviticus under Moses, He inaugurated it and had them perform certain things in order to show them a truth. It prophetically spoke of something that was to come and that something that was to come (now watch) the two loaves of bread represented, I believe, Jew and Gentile in one body—Jew and Gentile in one body. Ephesians 2 says Paul was given to the church to reveal the mystery of Christ. And the mystery of Christ was this: Jew and Gentile in one body. That mystery was explained in Ephesians 2 and 3. Now, when you read Romans to whom is Romans written? Who does he address in that Book? You tell me. He addresses Jew and Gentile who are part of the (what?) the Church. See the Church is comprised of people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when they come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the middle wall of partition that separates (I’ll make my body the middle wall of partition) that separates the Jew from the Gentile is the Law and the ordinances of the Law. It was the Law and the ordinances of the Law that set the Jews apart and made them distinct from all the other people on the face of this earth. If a Gentile wanted to believe in Jehovah they had to come under the Law and if they were a male they had to be circumcised and they had to keep the ordinances of the Law. But when Christ died—through His death He brought Jew and Gentile together in one body. And you are going to understand that more and more as we go along. So the day of Pentecost symbolically was going to point to this day when the Holy Spirit would come and indwell people. The indwelling of the people was what constituted the Church because before Pentecost the Holy Spirit would come on people and leave people. In the inauguration of the New Covenant God said in Ezekiel 36, “I will put My Spirit within you.” You remember in John 14 Jesus said, “It’s expedient for you that I go away. If I do not go away the Comforter cannot come. ” He is with you now but He shall be (where?) in you.” So Pentecost is the inauguration of the Church—the Holy Spirit indwelling Jew and Gentile (probably Jews at that time at the beginning at the day of Pentecost) indwelling Jews and then eventually indwelling Gentiles and putting them together in the Church. Acts 2:7 it says, 7 They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, care not all these who are speaking Galileans?Now this is the apostles speaking in other tongues. The word for “tongues” in verse 4 is GLOSSA. The word GLOSSA means languages. It’s HETERO GLOSSA so they are speaking in other languages. Now verse 6. 6 And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language.And yet they were Galileans. And it says in verse 8, 8 “And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?9 “Parthians and Medes and then he names all these languages and then in verse 10 you drop down and it says, and visitors from (where?) Rome, both Jews and (what?) proselytes,now a proselytes then was a Gentile that had come over to the Jewish religion but they had come in such a way that they were not an esteemed Gentile in the sense anymore because they had adopted Jehovah as their God. So what do you have? You have visitors from Rome. On the day of Pentecost hearing the message delivered by Peter and some of them obviously believing because in that day there were thousands added to the Church. Well they were there because they were believers and it was the day of Pentecost, but they went back to their home. Where was their home? Their home was (what?) it rhymes—there home was Rome. So when they went home to Rome they took the gospel of Jesus Christ in all probably with them. This is the way we suppose thatthat church started. Now possibly Priscilla and Aquila were part of the original group of believers. It could be that they were saved before they ever met Paul in Corinth. Do you understand? When they were expelled by Claudius from Rome it could be that they had already been saved and therefore went to Corinth and had in common the gospel of Jesus Christ, were strengthened in that gospel, taught more by Paul and then went back. Go to Romans 16 and let’s look at this passage. Romans 16:3, 5. We know from this verse that Paul writes the epistle to the Romans that Priscilla and Aquila (don’t ever pronounce words the way I say them—I have no idea—I don’t know phonetics so always check them out.) Romans 16, 3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus,4 who for my life risked their own necks, to whom not only do I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles;5 also greet the church that is in (what?)their house. So we know they were expelled but that ban was lifted after Claudius died and they were allowed to go back to Rome. We know Priscilla and Aquila started out in Rome and in all probability they were saved. They went to Corinth when the decree came for the Jews to leave. They met Paul were developed in their faith and then when the ban was lifted they moved back to Rome. So Paul is writing and he is looking forward to seeing Priscilla and Aquila.
CHURCH AT ROME CONSISTED OF JEWS AND GENTILES.Now the church at Rome consisted of Jew and Gentile. This is the next thing I want you to see. We looked at the founding of the Church at Rome, now I want you to see that the Church at Rome consisted of Jews and Gentiles. Now this is very important to your understanding of the book because what’s going to happen is Paul is going to show how the gospel relates to Jew and to Gentile. So all the way through the book as you read through that book you’ve got to ask yourself, “What is he dealing with—Jewish principles or Gentile thinking? What is he dealing with?” And this will help you understand the book. An understanding of the Book of Romans as a whole is absolutely vital is you are really going to grasp what Paul is saying in this book—I believe it’s essential to understanding the book. And I believe that to do as I did in my early days – when we went to Mexico as missionaries I was a brand new child of God—only 1½ years old in the Lord—well I guess I was about 2 years old. We ended up in Mexico and I began working with these teenagers and I was leading them to Christ and there was no one there to teach them. So I said to the Lord, “Lord if you want me to teach them I’ll do it.” Somebody has to teach them because I’ve known the importance of the Word of God ever since I got saved. So I began teaching them and I began teaching them the Book of Romans. I had some commentaries on Romans. I had Barnhouse on Romans—good thing I had good commentaries. But I didn’t know how and I just looked at little fill-in-the-blank Bible studies and that wouldn’t do. Somebody said, “Look, just get in a book of the Bible and plod through that book. Well I got in Romans and I plodded. And I found out what 1 meant and then I found out what verse 2 meant and then I found out what verse 3 meant….and I taught it that way. And then I found Irving Jensen. And Irving Jensen explained the importance of understanding the whole structure of a book—understanding the occasion of that book—understanding the author’s purpose in writing the book—the theme of that book and the structure of the book because all of that governs your interpretation of singular passages in a particular book. So it is vital for you to understand as you read this book that the Church at Rome consisted of Jews and Gentiles and Paul’s message to the Romans takes this into consideration.