Introduction — The Gospel of God

A Series Introduction

Before we open the argument tomorrow, today is our orientation day. Romans is the longest and most carefully reasoned of Paul’s letters, and the one that has shaken the church awake again and again across the centuries. It deserves a running start. Today we set the stage — who wrote it, why, what it is about, and how its argument unfolds — so that everything after lands with greater weight.

Pray to Begin

Ask — that the Holy Spirit, who carried Paul as he wrote, would now open this letter to you; that He would give you patience for its reasoning and joy at its conclusions.

Give thanks — for a gospel that is not your achievement but God’s gift; and that the same letter that has converted skeptics and reformers across the ages is now open before you.

Yield — every quiet attempt to make yourself righteous on your own terms, and ask God to teach you instead the righteousness that comes by faith from first to last.

Today’s Passage — An Overview of the Whole Letter

Romans is a letter, written by a real man to a real church, dictated to a scribe named Tertius (Romans 16:22) somewhere around AD 57, most likely from Corinth near the end of Paul’s third missionary journey. It is sixteen chapters long, and it is unlike his other letters in one striking way: Paul did not found the church in Rome, and he had never even visited it. “For I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you… but have been prevented from coming until now” (Romans 1:11, 13). Every other major letter Paul wrote was sent to a congregation he had planted or to a coworker he had trained. Rome was different. He was writing ahead of himself — introducing himself and his gospel to believers he hoped soon to meet face to face.

That single fact shapes the whole book. Because Paul was not putting out a local fire or answering a specific scandal, he had the freedom to lay out the gospel itself — fully, carefully, from the ground up. The result is the nearest thing in the New Testament to a sustained, ordered statement of what the gospel is and why it changes everything. Romans is Paul thinking aloud about the deepest things, knowing strangers will read it.

Here is how he opens, and notice how much theology he packs into a single greeting before he ever says hello:

"Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, regarding His Son, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Him and on behalf of His name, we received grace and apostleship to call all those among the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 1:1–7 (BSB)

Even the address is a sermon. Before the letter is one paragraph old, Paul has named its great subject — the gospel of God — and tied it to the prophets, to David’s line, to the resurrection, and to a worldwide mission. We will spend weeks unpacking what he announces here in a breath.

Original Language: Two Words That Carry the Letter

Two Greek words appear in Romans’ opening lines and then run like load-bearing beams through the whole book. Learn them now, and you will hear them echo on every page.

The first is εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), pronounced yoo-ang-GHEL-ee-on. Strong’s G2098. We translate it gospel, and it means good news — literally a good (eu-) message (angelia). In the Roman world this was not a churchy word at all; it was the word for the announcement of a victory won or the birth of an emperor, news worth dispatching a runner to proclaim. Paul seizes that public, royal word and fills it with new content: the good news is of God (it comes from Him), it is about His Son, and it announces a victory already won at the cross and the empty tomb. The gospel, for Paul, is not advice about how to live; it is news about what God has done. Notice too how the word saturates the opening: Paul is “set apart for the gospel of God” (1:1), the gospel was “promised beforehand” (1:2), and he serves God “in the gospel of His Son” (1:9). The whole letter is an unfolding of this one announcement.

The second word is δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē), pronounced dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay. Strong’s G1343. We translate it righteousness — and it is the very heart of Romans. The word belongs to the courtroom: it means a right standing, being in the right before the judge. The towering question Romans answers is this: how can sinful human beings be in the right before a holy God? The stunning answer — the one that has overturned proud lives for two thousand years — is that the dikaiosynē (dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay) we could never earn is given to us by God, received through faith in Christ. It is at once God’s own righteous character, His saving activity to put things right, and the standing He grants to those who believe. Hold all three together and you have the gospel in a word.

When these two words meet, you have the thesis of the entire book: in the euangelion (yoo-ang-GHEL-ee-on), the dikaiosynē (dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay) of God is revealed. That sentence is Romans 1:16–17, and it is where we are headed today.

Historical & Cultural Context

Authorship. Romans is, by near-universal agreement of scholars across the spectrum, a genuine letter of the apostle Paul. It is one of the so-called undisputed Pauline epistles, and its authenticity has rarely been seriously questioned. Paul was a Pharisee of impeccable training (Philippians 3:5–6), a persecutor of the church violently stopped on the Damascus road, and the apostle God appointed to carry the gospel to the Gentile world. By the time he writes Romans he is a veteran of years of mission across Asia Minor and Greece.

Date and occasion. Paul writes near the close of his third journey, around AD 57, having finished his work in the eastern Mediterranean (“there is no further place for me in these regions,” Romans 15:23). He is about to carry a collection of relief funds to the poor believers in Jerusalem, after which he intends to sail west — and he hopes Rome will become his base and his sending church for a brand-new mission field, Spain (Romans 15:24, 28). So this letter is, in part, a self-introduction to a strategic church he wants behind him. He commits his whole gospel to writing so that the Romans will know exactly the man and the message they are being asked to support.

The church at Rome. No apostle founded it. The Roman believers were most likely a mix of Jewish Christians and a growing number of Gentile converts, gathering in scattered house-churches across the imperial capital. A few years earlier the emperor Claudius had expelled Jews from Rome (an event the historian Suetonius records, and which Acts 18:2 mentions); when that edict lapsed and Jewish believers returned, they came back to congregations that had become largely Gentile. Much of Romans — especially the long meditation on Israel and the Gentiles in chapters 9–11, and the call to welcome the weak and the strong in chapters 14–15 — reads as Paul helping a divided fellowship understand that Jew and Gentile stand together, equally guilty and equally saved, on the single ground of God’s mercy.

Study Notes

A few threads run through the whole letter; watch for them from the first chapter.

• The righteousness of God. This is the master theme. Every section circles back to it: God is righteous; humanity is not; God acts in Christ to make the unrighteous righteous; and God’s own faithfulness is vindicated in the process. Whenever the word righteousness surfaces, slow down — you are at the center.
• Faith from first to last. Romans insists that this righteousness is received, never achieved — “by faith from start to finish” (1:17). The hero of the letter’s argument is Abraham, who “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3), centuries before the Law was given. Faith, not pedigree or performance, is the door.
• Jew and Gentile, together. Paul repeats one phrase like a refrain: “first to the Jew, then to the Greek.” All have sinned (Romans 3:23); all are justified the same way (Romans 3:29–30); God is faithful to His ancient promises to Israel even as He throws the doors open to the nations. The gospel makes one people out of two.
• The Spirit and the new life. Romans is not only about how we are declared right; it is about how we are made new. Chapter 8 — life in the Spirit, no condemnation, nothing able to separate us from the love of God — is one of the summits of all Scripture, and the whole argument has been climbing toward it.

The map of the argument

Romans falls into a clear and deliberate shape. Keeping it in view will keep you from getting lost in the reasoning:

• Chapters 1–8 — The gospel explained. First the bad news: every human being, Gentile and Jew alike, stands guilty before God (1:18–3:20). Then the good news: God justifies the ungodly freely, through faith in Christ, apart from works of the Law (3:21–5:21). Then the new life that follows: freed from sin’s mastery, freed from the Law’s condemnation, and — the crown of it all — alive in the Spirit, secure in a love nothing can sever (chapters 6–8).
• Chapters 9–11 — God’s faithfulness to Israel. If the gospel has gone to the Gentiles, what of God’s ancient promises to the Jews? Paul wrestles, with grief and then with worship, through the mystery of Israel’s present unbelief and God’s unbroken faithfulness, ending in a doxology too large for words (11:33–36).
• Chapters 12–16 — The gospel lived out. Doctrine becomes a doorstep. “Therefore… present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (12:1). Love, humility, service, submission to authorities, the welcome of the weak by the strong, and a long closing roll of greetings to the saints in Rome. The righteousness received by faith becomes a righteousness lived in love.

The Thesis: Romans 1:16–17

If Romans has a heartbeat, it is two verses near the start. Everything before them is introduction; everything after them is exposition. Here Paul states his theme outright — and we will treasure it today:

Walk slowly through it.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Paul writes this to the proudest city on earth, the seat of an empire that crucified the One he proclaims. To announce a crucified Jewish carpenter as Lord of all was, by every worldly measure, foolishness. Yet Paul is not ashamed — because the message that looks weak is in fact “the power of God.” The Greek word behind power is dynamis, the root of our word dynamite. The gospel is not a quaint idea; it is the explosive force by which God rescues people.

“the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Note the scope and the condition. The scope is everyone — no nationality, class, past, or merit excluded. The condition is belief — not achievement. And the order, “first to the Jew, then to the Greek,” honors God’s covenant history while flinging the door wide to the world.

“For the gospel reveals the righteousness of God.” Here are our two words married together: the euangelion (yoo-ang-GHEL-ee-on) reveals the dikaiosynē (dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay) of God. This is the sentence the whole letter exists to explain. In the gospel, God both shows His own righteousness and gives a righteousness to those who have none — and He does it “by faith from start to finish.” No part of it is earned at the front end and kept by effort at the back end. It is faith, all the way down.

“just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” Paul reaches back to the prophet Habakkuk (Habakkuk 2:4), proving the gospel is no novelty but the fulfillment of what God said long ago. This one line, quoted here, lit the fuse of the Reformation when a struggling monk named Martin Luther finally understood it — that the righteousness of God is not a standard that condemns him, but a gift that saves him. Centuries of believers have found their footing on exactly this sentence.

Personal Application

Three things to carry as we begin this letter:

1. The gospel is news, not advice. Romans does not open by telling you what to do; it opens by announcing what God has done. Where, honestly, do you tend to live as if your standing with God rested on your performance? What would change in an ordinary day if you truly believed your righteousness is a gift, received and not earned?

2. “By faith from start to finish.” Many begin the Christian life trusting grace, then quietly drift into trying to maintain it by effort. In what corner of your life have you turned a free gift back into a wage you are anxiously working for? What would it look like to receive instead?

3. “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Paul says this to the center of worldly power. Is there a place — a conversation, a relationship, a room — where you find the gospel quietly embarrassing? What might it mean to trust that the message that looks weakest is in fact the power of God?

Pray to Close

The central truth as we begin: in the gospel, God reveals and freely gives the very righteousness we could never earn, received by faith from first to last — good news of His power to save everyone who believes. Romans is the long, patient unfolding of that one announcement.

Praise — God for a salvation that is His power and not your effort, His gift and not your wage, His righteousness and not your record.

Confess — every hidden attempt to stand before God on your own merits, and the quiet shame that makes the gospel feel too good or too weak to be true.

Ask — that over these next weeks the Spirit would do in you what He did in Luther and in countless others: that the righteousness of God would stop terrifying you and start saving you, and that you would learn to live by faith.