Back to School Resource Guide
Back to School Resource Guide
Setting the Stage for the Book of Romans
Why Study Romans?
The pressure to perform can be crushing. Who among us lives free from the weight of feeling we must do more, reach higher, go bigger? The pressure is both internal and external. Something in us deeply wants to earn others’ approval, while at the same time we suspect they’re whispering we don’t deserve to be here—at our job, at our church, in this community. We grind daily to prove to ourselves and to others that we’re enough. And yet we know we’re not. Deep down we know we’re sinful, tired, and disappointing.
Our spiritual lives are not immune. This same pressure seeps into our relationship with God. We want to somehow earn his love or prove we’re good people. We weigh our good deeds against our bad deeds, comparing ourselves to those around us. This reflex toward self-sufficiency is nothing new. And Paul’s letter to the Romans is the antidote.
Romans loudly and gloriously proclaims that our right standing with God is not on us. You and I are not responsible for earning our salvation. Quite the opposite. We cannot earn our salvation. We live by faith. Faith that is mercifully given and gratefully received.
Faith in the finished and perfect work of Christ, not ourselves. Romans responds to the Christian’s inner doubts and the culture’s outward pressure and says, Yes, we do all fall short. But our God does not, and we are in him. And absolutely nothing will ever separate us from Christ Jesus (see Rom. 3:23–26; 8:31–39).
Romans
Jen Oshman
In this volume in the Conversational Commentary series, Jen Oshman offers women a warm and clear verse-by-verse examination of the book of Romans. It’s an accessible resource for personal study, small-group discussions, teaching, and outreach.
Who Was Paul?
While the apostle Paul is now often considered the most important person in Christianity next to Christ himself, the first time he appears in the Bible he’s standing watch over the stoning of a Christian named Stephen (Acts 7:58). Paul, also known by his Jewish name Saul, was not yet a follower of Jesus. He was a devout and powerful Jew (Phil. 3:4–6), ravaging the early church and dragging Christ followers off to prison (Acts 8:3). He was a terrifying enemy of early Christians, to be sure.
Paul’s dramatic conversion from violent Pharisee to sold-out servant of Jesus happened as he was on his way from Stephen’s death to persecute even more Christians in Damascus. The risen Lord himself appeared to Paul in a bright light, asked him why he was persecuting him, and left Paul blind, but with the assurance that he would be told what to do when he entered Damascus (Acts 9:4–6). Three days later, the scales fell off Paul’s eyes—both physically and spiritually. He saw the truth about Jesus and believed. Paul was baptized and immediately began preaching the gospel (Acts 9:17–20). Jesus called Paul a chosen instrument, “to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15).
And Paul did just that. He was fully committed to the mission of Jesus from his conversion and immediate calling. During his ministry, Paul took three missionary journeys and planted multiple churches, which in turn planted multiple more. He and the other apostles debated and formalized church doctrine, and he wrote many letters to both churches and church leaders, making up much of the New Testament. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul (Acts 19:11) and preserved him through shipwrecks, imprisonments, beatings, hunger, thirst, exposure, and more (2 Cor. 11:24–27).
Paul was unmarried when he came on the scene (1 Cor. 7:8). He was a Roman citizen, which allowed him special provisions and protections (Acts 22:25). He suffered some kind of ailment, which he called a “thorn . . . in the flesh,” asking the Lord to remove it three times, but to no avail (2 Cor. 12:7–10). He was eventually martyred for his faith while under arrest in Rome. Truly Paul counted everything as a loss compared to knowing, loving, following, and proclaiming Jesus (Phil. 3:7–10). He saw every aspect of his life—his education as a Pharisee, his citizenship in Rome, his singleness, even his thorn in the flesh—as something to be stewarded for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel.
Setting of Romans
Christianity is now the world’s largest religion. More than one-third of people around the world say they worship Jesus—that’s 2.3 billion of us in this massive faith family!1 But as you probably know, our beginnings were very humble. After Jesus ascended to heaven in the first chapter of Acts, 120 Christians gathered in an upper room to pray (Acts 1:15). Shortly after that prayer meeting, the apostle Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost and 3,000 people believed (Acts 2:41). Following that, the Bible says 5,000 more people came to faith because of the apostles’ teaching (Acts 4:2–4). And not long after that, Paul joined the movement with a passion to preach Christ where Christ had never been preached before (Rom. 15:20).
While we now take for granted that our faith is worldwide, Christianity was an upsetting intrusion to the first-century powers that be. Ruling Jewish leaders saw Christianity as blasphemy, worthy of swift punishment. Ruling Romans didn’t like the way Christianity upset the established order of their pagan culture. In first-century Rome, Jews and Gentiles alike who converted to Christ were met with suspicion, persecution, and even death.
This is the challenging cultural context that this letter’s recipients lived in. For years, Paul longed to visit the church at Rome (Rom. 15:23), but as of the writing of this letter, he hadn’t made it there yet. He was eager to encourage them and to receive encouragement from them (Rom. 1:11–12). How precious and necessary that encouragement would have been.
Beyond external persecution of the church, Paul’s letter reveals there was internal strife too. The first Roman Christians were likely Jewish Christians. But in the AD 40s, the Roman Emperor Claudius kicked out all the Jews—Christian or not—of Rome, which would have left the church solely in the hands of the Gentile believers. The Jews were allowed back into Rome after Claudius died in AD 54. Can you imagine a church founded by one ethnicity, but then led by another, and then having to reintegrate, all while living under the duress of the new Emperor Nero, who hated Christians? It was undoubtedly a pressure-cooker situation.
We cannot earn our salvation. We live by faith. Faith that is mercifully given and gratefully received.
Themes in Romans
One primary theme jumps off the pages of Romans: the gospel, which is the good news that Jesus willingly paid the punishment due to us for our sins on the cross and offers us his righteousness in return. We who receive that gift, by grace through faith, are no longer alienated from God and enemies of his, but we are reconciled to him forever. Martin Luther, the monk who sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517, called Romans “the very purest Gospel.”2 John Calvin, another theologian and Reformer, said Romans is a door “to all the most profound treasures of Scripture.”3
The theme verses of Romans (Rom. 1:16–17) prepare us for several subthemes:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Paul shines a bright light on the power of God throughout this letter. He repeatedly points us to God’s sovereignty—his faithfulness throughout all history and his power to accomplish all he said he would. Paul teaches us over and over that salvation is for those who believe. It is not accomplished through our own efforts, work, or will but is a gift to everyone—both Jews and Gentiles. No matter who we are or where we are from, the gospel says all who are unrighteous can be made righteous through the righteousness of Jesus.
And we live by faith! From start to finish—for Jews and Greeks, for the weak and strong—we who believe are saved by the finished work of Christ on our behalf, as he has mercifully called us to himself, by grace through faith.
The “purest Gospel” and the doorway to the “treasures of Scripture.” So many good gifts await us in this letter.
Studying Romans
If you’ve ever read Romans, then you already know that not only will our hearts be greatly encouraged but our minds will have to deeply engage. We’ll run into difficult words like justification, propitiation, predestination, and sanctification. We’ll encounter difficult doctrines like the place of Old Testament law today, what it means that we’re descended from Adam, the identity of Israel, and the reality that we Christians continue to struggle with sin even though we’re saved. Paul’s letter to the Romans covers so much.
But more than anything, Romans takes our eyes off ourselves and lifts them to gaze on the glories and goodness of our God in heaven. In these pages, we’ll be called again and again to ponder the unfathomable love, mercy, perfection, and kindness of our God. The Christian life is not an easy one—it wasn’t in ancient Rome, and it isn’t here and now—but it is a secure one. As Paul says, “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Rom. 8:31)?
Romans is a gift to the church in the theology that it covers and the glory that it reveals. It’s no exaggeration to say the doctrines in this letter have changed the world. May it also be true that they change our hearts.
Notes:
- Conrad Hackett and David McClendon, “Christians Remain World’s Largest Religious Group, but They Are Declining in Europe,” Pew Research Center—Short Reads, April 5, 2017, Pew Research Center, accessed July 25, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/short‑reads/2017/04/05/ christians‑remain‑worlds‑largest‑religious‑group‑but‑they‑are‑declining‑in‑europe/.
- Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, A New Translation, by J. Theodore Mueller (1954; repr., Kregel, 1976), preface, xiii.
- John Calvin, “The Theme of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans,” in The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Ross Mackenzie, Calvin’s Commentaries (Eerdmans, 1960), 5
This article is adapted from Romans: Saved by Grace by Jen Oshman.
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