The Epistle to the Romans

The Epistle to the Romans is a letter that the apostle Paul addressed to the Christians of Rome, around the years 57 or 58, from Corinth. It is the longest of all Paul’s letters, and the most measured: in it he sets out, from one end to the other, in order, the heart of what he proclaims. The New Testament places it at the head of his letters, on account of its breadth and its weight.

A Church he had not founded

When Paul writes, there are already Christians at Rome, but it is not he who gathered them: he has never been to the city. The Gospel had reached it through others, brought no doubt by Jews and travellers come from the East. Paul therefore addresses a community he knows only from afar, and he begins by giving thanks for it: “Your faith is renowned throughout the whole world.” Romans 1:8. For years he had wished to go there, without having found the occasion.

Why this letter

Writing to a Church that does not know him personally, Paul states his title at once: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, an apostle by his calling, set apart to proclaim the Gospel of God.” Romans 1:1. He is seeking a base to carry the Gospel further still, as far as Spain, to the edge of the known West, and Rome would be the stage: “I hope to see you as I pass through, when I set out for Spain, and to be helped on my way there by you.” Romans 15:24. The letter prepares this visit: Paul makes himself known and sets out in full the Gospel he preaches, so that this Church may become his support towards the West. Phoebe, of the Church of Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, was its bearer.

The Gospel set out in full

Because he writes to present his message, and not to settle a local crisis, Paul gives here the most complete exposition of what he proclaims. He gathers its subject into a single sentence: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is a divine power for the salvation of everyone who believes, the Jew first, then the Greek.” Romans 1:16. And he gives the reason at once: “In it is revealed a righteousness of God that comes from faith and is destined for faith.” Romans 1:17. From this announcement, the letter develops what this righteousness and this faith are. All men, Jews and pagans alike, are under sin and unable to justify themselves; God justifies freely, by grace, the one who believes in Christ; freed from sin and death, the believer now lives by the Spirit. Paul then faces the question of Israel, his people: its greater part did not believe in Christ, and yet the promises God had made to it, to choose it for his own, are not revoked. He ends with the consequences for everyday life: love, obedience, the mutual welcome between believers.

The summit of Paul’s work

Paul writes this letter at the height of his ministry, after years of preaching and after his other letters. He had already treated these questions, notably to the Galatians, in the heat of a struggle against those who wanted to impose the Law of Moses on the pagans. To the Romans he takes them up coolly, in order, with no adversary before him. From this comes the character of the epistle: the most doctrinal and the most structured of his letters, the one that gathers his thought into a whole. This is why it has been read, from the first centuries, as the summary of his Gospel.

A letter that shaped the Church

No book has marked as much as this one the way the Church understands sin, grace and salvation. In the fourth century, it was in opening this letter that Augustine found the turning point of his conversion; and it is from it that the Church drew its doctrine of grace, when it had to defend that salvation comes first from the gift of God, and not from the powers of man alone. Read from century to century, the Epistle to the Romans remains the book where the Church learns how God saves man: by his grace, in Christ, received through faith.