What Romans is all about. There are hundreds of commentaries on Romans in print today, and thousands have been written over the centuries. So what is the point of still one more commentary? The reason is that this is not still one more commentary. This commentary takes an entirely different approach from nearly all the popular commentaries available on Romans today. In this commentary, we will look at Romans through the eyes of the Christians who lived in the first few centuries after Romans was written.
Some of these men personally knew the apostles. They all lived in the same culture in which Paul lived. Most of them spoke the language of Romans koine Greek as their native tongue. Significantly, all these men from whom we will be quoting lived before Augustine presented his radically new interpretation of Romans in the early 5th century. Many people today refer to these early Christians as the Church Fathers. However, this is a considerable misnomer. These men were not church fathers.
They were simply faithful church leaders, apologists, teachers, and martyrs. None of these men viewed himself as a church father, nor did any of them expect all Christians to defer to their opinions. What you will find different? Today, most evangelical Protestant commentaries on Romans follow the interpretations of Augustine, Calvin, or Luther. Calvin's interpretation of Romans was essentially the same as Augustine's, and Luther's system was built on that of Augustine.
Even Roman Catholic commentaries show the influence of Augustine in certain areas. So what we want to explore in this commentary is how Christians understood Romans before Augustine. I want you to share the same experience that a Christian living in the first four centuries would have experienced when hearing Romans explained on a given Sunday. I want you to hear the same explanations they would have heard.
As you will see, those early Christians understood Romans quite differently than what most Christians hear today. That is because they lived prior to Augustine's reinterpretation of Romans in the 5th century. So who was right? Augustine or the entire body of Christians who lived before him? Did the entire body of Christ misunderstand Romans until Augustine came on the scene? Did the first century Christians in Rome misunderstand the very letter written to them?
Particularly after Paul spent at least two years among them after writing his letter. Actually, we have the opportunity of seeing how the first century Christians in Rome understood some of the key points of Paul's letter. That is because in A.D. 96, the entire body of elders in Rome wrote a lengthy letter to the Christians in Corinth. Their letter discusses many of the same topics that Paul addresses in Romans. Yet their letter was written merely 40 years after Paul wrote his epistle to their church.
If those church leaders did not correctly understand Romans, then who can? So we will be beginning with their letter and then continuing with other leaders and writers from the early second century until the time of Augustine. Most of the writers I will be quoting lived before the Council of Nicaea, at which time Christianity essentially became the state religion of Rome.
However, there was no discernible change in how Christians interpreted the epistle to the Romans until Augustine introduced his new interpretation in the fifth century. So I will be quoting from some of the key commentators of the fourth century as well. Why did Paul write Romans? Before we plunge into Romans, we would do well to ask ourselves, why did Paul write his letter to the Romans in the first place? Contrary to what is popularly believed, Paul was not writing a treatise on salvation.
Nor was he trying to sum up the entire gospel in one letter, as Luther claimed. Instead, Paul primarily wrote Romans to counter the Jewish Christians, who were insisting that Gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved. This was not a new issue. The issue of circumcision and the law arose immediately after Peter baptized Cornelius and his household.
No sooner did Peter perform this divinely ordained act than the Jewish brethren attacked Peter for entering the house of uncircumcised Gentiles and eating with them. Even though Peter was the foremost leader of the Church at that time, these Jewish Christians did not hesitate to attack Him. That is how vehemently the Jewish Christians felt about the matter. During the next few years, the issue continued to simmer.
It finally came to a head when Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch from their first missionary journey. While the Christians in Antioch were rejoicing, some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers. Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. The congregation in Antioch decided to send Paul and Barnabas up to Jerusalem to have the apostles settle this question.
At the beginning of the council in Jerusalem, some of the sect of the Pharisees, who believed rose up, saying," It is necessary to circumcise them and to charge them to keep the law of Moses." At this council, the apostles declared that the Gentiles did not have to be circumcised or keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. Instead, Jews and Gentiles alike are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
This declaration from all the apostles should have permanently settled the matter, but the Jewish believers were extremely stubborn about the issue. As a result, Paul kept running into this controversy in congregation after congregation. When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he devoted almost his entire letter to this single issue. Paul also had to address the matter when writing to the Philippians and Colossians. In Romans, Paul confronts the issue once again.
Although he uses most of the same arguments he used in Galatians, Paul goes into much more detail in Romans. He not only states that the Mosaic Law can save no one, but he explains why it does not have the power to do so. He not only states that we are all saved by faith in Christ, but he explains why this is so. Paul also goes to great lengths to show that God has not been unfair to the Jews by opening the door of salvation to the Gentiles.
He further explains how the death of one man can bring the gift of salvation to all mankind. Throughout his letter, Paul refers to the Mosaic Law nearly 60 times. He mentions the Jews, Gentiles, and Israelites over 50 times. He also refers to circumcision more than 25 times. So it is obvious that Paul's main focus in Romans is on the Mosaic Law and the relative status of Jews and Gentiles. Why this was an epical issue. The issue of the Mosaic Law was a life or death issue for Christianity.
If the Judaizers had prevailed, it would have snuffed out the gospel. Christians would have looked to the law of Moses for salvation. The believing Gentiles would have been forced to be circumcised and keep the minute regulations of the law. As a result, relatively few Gentiles would have been converted, and Christianity would have been reduced to being a small Jewish sect. So the apostles absolutely could not lose this spiritual battle. The very existence of Christianity was at stake, Paul's great argument.
Because this was such a monumental issue, Paul decided to address the issue in such detail that he would utterly vanquish the false gospel of the Judaizers. To that end, in Romans, Paul presents his great argument, which contains 8,000 words. This argument begins in the middle of chapter 1 of Romans and continues unabated to the end of chapter 13. Of course, our present chapters are man-made. Paul did not divide his argument into chapters.
Those 13 chapters in our modern Bibles actually comprise one single argument. This is the longest sustained discussion in the entire Bible on a single theological issue. Paul's six key points. The thesis of Paul's great argument is that neither Jews nor Gentiles need to obey the Mosaic Law in order to be saved, and that Jews and Gentiles stand as exact equals before God. As I have said, Paul then goes into great detail to show why these things are true.
Despite its considerable length, Paul's entire argument can be reduced to six key points. 1. All mankind lies guilty before God and needs salvation. 2. The law of Moses is unable to save or justify Jews, let alone Gentiles. Neither circumcision nor obedience to the law of Moses are necessary any longer. 3. All humans, Jews and Gentiles alike, are saved and justified only by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. 4. For there is no partiality with God. Jews and Gentiles stand as equals before Him.
Believing Jews and believing Gentiles together make up the new Israel of God. 5. God has not been unfair to the Jews in bestowing grace and salvation on the Gentiles. 6. Whether we are Jews or Gentiles, after our initial salvation by grace through faith, God requires us to walk faithfully with Christ, producing godly fruit for the remainder of our lives. However, we do not do this solely on our own strength, for we have the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. These six points are all easy to understand.
Yet Paul's great argument can easily confuse the reader. One reason is that Paul does not present his six points in perfect sequential order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. To be sure, he begins with point 1 and he ends with point 6. Furthermore, he connects the beginning and ending points with his four remaining points. However, he does not present these six key points in the manner that a Western Latin writer would present them.
Being an Easterner himself, Paul naturally develops his points in accord with the Eastern Greek way of approaching a subject. That is, when he sees an immediate nexus between the point he is discussing and a distant point, he diverges from the point at hand to discuss the future point. I say diverges, but the Greeks did not look at this as a divergence, but as a logical development of his argument.
A person only has to read the writings of the Greek early Christians like Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, to see how the Greek Eastern mind worked. After initially covering all six key points in the first few chapters, Paul devotes the rest of his great argument to restating these points over and over, but not in any particular order. Each time he states his points a little differently, or he approaches them from a different angle.
In addition, Paul includes a lot of subpoints for most of his key points. Sometimes these subpoints seem like digressions, but they are actually further developments of his argument. Mixed in with all these things, Paul uses several different writing styles throughout his great argument. All these things result in Paul thoroughly establishing his points, but they often cause the modern reader to lose Paul's flow of argument.
Furthermore, at all times, Paul is keenly aware that many Jewish Christians will have a difficult time receiving what he is saying. So he constantly reassures them of his love for them, and he repeatedly inserts reassuring statements about their blessed heritage. The result is a lengthy argument of 8,000 words that can easily overwhelm the reader. In short, Romans is rich in content, but it is often difficult to understand.
In fact, aside from the apocalyptic portions of Revelation, Romans is easily the most difficult book of the New Testament to comprehend. It was for this very reason that Chrysostom warned his listeners," Unless we receive Paul's words with proper caution and keep looking to the point of the apostle, countless inconsistencies are going to follow." Chrysostom's words have proved to be prophetic.
Different teachers through the centuries have lost sight of Paul's main thesis, and countless inconsistencies have followed. Reinventing Romans, as I have said, it is not easy to follow the flow of Paul's great argument. Even when we can follow the flow, there are still many things that are hard to understand. Peter warns us about this. Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.
He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. 2 Pet. 3:15, 16, NIV. If all of Paul's letters contain some things that are hard to understand, this is particularly true of Romans. As a result, various teachers through the centuries have continued to reinvent Romans.
These teachers have used Romans as a treasure trove of proof texts to select at random to invent their own interpretations of his letter, the Gnostics. The first ones to reinvent Romans were the Gnostics. They used selective proof texts from Romans and other letters of Paul to argue the following points: 1. The God of this world is a different God from the Father. 2. This inferior god created mankind. 3. As a result, our flesh is inherently depraved. 4. Therefore, humans are totally incapable of doing good. 5.
Because the flesh is depraved, Jesus did not literally come in the flesh. For the same reason, there will be no bodily resurrection. 6. Various humans were predestined to salvation, either by the angels or by the Father. The Gnostics produced proof texts from Paul's letters to support each of these doctrines. At the same time, they promoted many other teachings that are not even remotely based on Scripture. Many of the early Christian discussions of Romans were in response to the Gnostics' teachings.
With the creation of the State Church in the fourth century, the Gnostics were eventually persecuted out of existence. However, just as they were disappearing, a former Gnostic disciple brought back their twin doctrines of predestination and man's total depravity. His name was Augustine, Augustine. At age 20, Augustine became a catechumen in the Gnostic Sect known as the Manichaeans, and he remained their disciple for nine years. He later left them and was baptized as an Orthodox Christian.
In his reinvention of Romans, Augustine made the total depravity of man the central theme of the book. According to Augustine, Paul's main point is to convince his readers that fallen humans are incapable of believing in Christ or doing any good. Our salvation is totally from God without any cooperation on our part. According to Augustine, Paul further teaches that before the creation of the world, God arbitrarily predestined certain humans for salvation and abandoned others to eternal condemnation.
For nearly 400 years, the Church had battled the false teachings of the Gnostics. Yet now, in a matter of decades, two of the main Gnostic doctrines were introduced into the Church. Because of his enormous influence in the Latin-speaking Western Church, and because of his ties with the Roman Emperor, Augustine's reinterpretation of Romans became the new orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church. In Augustine's day, those who refused to accept it were branded as heretics.
Today, Augustine's reinterpretation of Romans primarily lives on in various Protestant and evangelical churches in the form of Calvinism. In fact, we will not be discussing Calvin's version of Romans separately, since it is almost identical to that of Augustine, Luther's version of Romans. In the 16th century, Martin Luther reinvented Romans once again. Just as Augustine's version of Romans had its roots in Gnosticism, Martin Luther's version of Romans had its roots in Augustine's system.
In fact, Luther had been an Augustinian monk. Yet Luther added a few innovations of his own. One of Luther's major reinterpretations was to redefine the works of the law. According to Luther, the works of the law are not circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath regulations, animal sacrifices, and similar regulations. Rather, they are any of God's commandments, including those given by Christ.
In short, Luther changed Paul's discussion of the conflict that exists between the Mosaic Law and the Gospel into an imaginary conflict between law and the gospel. Luther inserted this reinterpretation of Romans into his newly translated German Bible in what he designated as a preface to Romans. Yet Luther's preface is over half as long as the book of Romans itself. After imbibing Luther's preface, it is doubtful if Luther's readers ever even heard what Paul actually has to say.
To be sure, they read Paul's words, but they read them through Luther's glasses. Luther also created a conflict between faith and works. According to Luther, works play no role in our salvation. Paul would agree that works are not necessary for our initial salvation. However, Paul also teaches," God will render to every man according to his works. Eternal life to those who, by perseverance in good work, seek for glory, honor, and immortality.
But to those who are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be indignation and wrath. As we will be discussing, many other passages of Scripture teach that after our initial salvation, godly fruit or works are essential if we are ultimately going to inherit eternal life. However, because of Luther's influence, works has become a negative word to millions of Christians.
If anyone teaches that obedience to Christ is necessary for our ultimate salvation, his teaching is called legalism, or works righteousness. Luther's reinterpretation of Romans has been the interpretation that has largely prevailed among so-called Bible-believing Protestants. Thousands of skillful writers and preachers have told and retold it