Romans Chapter 2: Why You MUST Read It!

Lesson Transcript

This is the chapter that I would say most often gets skipped over in Romans, and yet it contains the key to the entire letter to the Romans. If you skip chapter 2, you are definitely going to miss out on what the book is about. However, ever since the Reformation, it's become common in sermons and pamphlets, as I said, to just ignore this chapter and to pretend that Paul begins his real message with chapter 3. Here, chapter 2 is what puts all of the rest of Romans in perspective.

If you don't get chapter 2 down, then you are going to misread the rest of Romans. Yet I know I couldn't even count the number of times I've heard sermons. I've heard many of them in this church, not from our people, but in the past when we've had visiting speakers. They will come in and, "Okay, let's open our Bibles to Romans," and they just start in chapter 3. Now, I realize, yeah, sometimes you have to preach from chapter 3.

In a few weeks, I'll be preaching from chapter 3, but I mean, this is not because they're going through and they just happen to be at chapter 3 at that point. No, they just skip, "We're going to start with chapter 3," or sometimes with chapter 4, either one. And they'll preach from there and they'll act like, "Well, this is everything that Paul has to say about salvation." And they imply that this is everything the New Testament has about salvation.

Just, you know, and you've all heard the expression, "The Romans rode to salvation." And somehow that Romans rode to salvation does not include chapter 2.