As a young seminary student I looked forward to one of my first courses, entitled Introduction to the New Testament. What stands out in my memory is the morning we were to begin our study of the book of Romans. The professor stood before the class and said, ‘Gentlemen, most theologians get excited about the Epistle to the Romans, but I don’t. I will say this about the book, that if the apostle Paul wrote any of the books that are attributed to him, he certainly wrote Romans. This was Paul’s attempt at a brief, systematic theology. Now, on to Galatians.’ I sat there in the classroom in stunned disbelief. I couldn’t take in the fact of a New Testament professor dismissing the book of Romans in about two minutes flat! Thankfully, most theologians do indeed get excited about the book of Romans, and I certainly do. For in Romans we have the nearest thing to a systematic theology to be found anywhere in the New Testament. Undoubtedly, Romans is the apostle Paul’s most comprehensive study of doctrine. No book in history has been so instrumental in changing lives as the Bible. We sometimes forget, however, that the Bible is really a library rather than a single book, being in fact a compilation of sixty-six books, each book making its own special contribution to the sum total of God’s written revelation. Having said that, I really do believe that if there is any one individual book, out of the sixty-six, which God has used to change lives more than any other, it is the book of Romans. Romans has had a profound impact on several of the great saints of church history. Think of Augustine, who, as a young man living in the fourth century, had distinguished himself by his brilliant mind and his academic ability. He was not, however, persuaded of the truth of Christianity. His mother, Monica, was a devout believer and prayed for the conversion of her son every day, but she saw no evidence of her prayers being answered. She would visit Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, and speak to him of her agony over her wayward son. In comforting her, Ambrose would say that perhaps some day God would convert Augustine and make use of his gifts for his own kingdom. So Monica persevered in prayer. In the meantime, Augustine, living an immoral and licentious life, had given himself to the exposition of pagan philosophy. But one day, when he was particularly depressed and downcast, he strolled through a garden where some little children were playing. They were playing a child’s game which had a Latin refrain, ‘Tolle lege, tolle lege, tolle lege’ which means, ‘Pick up and read, pick up and read, pick up and read.’ As Augustine, preoccupied with his own inner thoughts, ambled through the garden, this refrain penetrated his reverie and his eyes fell upon a copy of the New Testament. Picking it up and opening it at random, he read the portion of Romans in which Paul wrote: ‘... not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.’ Augustine was seized with a sense of conviction for his sin, as the Holy Spirit used these words from Romans to pierce his heart. This was the conversion experience of Augustine, who became what many regard as the greatest saint in the first thousand years of the Christian church. Over one thousand years later we discover another young man who was very tormented in his soul. He had no peace concerning his life or his faith, and he was determined to find the truth about religion. He had become a monk in the first place, not out of a sense of devotion to God, but out of a fear of divine punishment. The story goes that the young man, the son of a German coalminer, was riding on horseback one afternoon when an electrical storm came up and a bolt of lightning struck so close to where he was riding that it knocked him from his horse. As he hit the ground, in his utter terror, he cried to God, ‘Save me, and I will become a monk.’ And he kept his promise by joining a monastery. Even there, as he sought to find peace with God, young Martin Luther was besieged by doubts and filled with despair. Luther describes his days in the monastery as a time when he went through rigorous acts of penance, self-sacrifice and self-flagellation, ‘If you had asked me, did I love God, I would say, Love God? Sometimes I hated him. I saw Christ as a terrifying judge, who had the sword of judgment above my head, and I had no peace.’ A study in depth of the life of this tormented young monk provides a most fascinating portrait. Luther developed great gifts as a scholar and, having become a Doctor of Holy Scripture, he went to Wittenberg University where he was appointed Professor and began to lecture in biblical studies. On one occasion he was preparing a series of lectures on the book of Romans. As he pored over manuscripts and read commentaries in his private cell in the monastery, he came to chapter 1:17: For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ He later recorded the effects of Paul’s words: ‘When I read those words, suddenly it dawned on me that the righteousness of God, of which Paul was speaking, was not that righteousness by which God himself is righteous, that righteousness that makes God so excellent and virtuous and transcendent in his holiness that makes me terrified of him, but rather Paul is expounding another theme, not only the righteousness of God by which God himself is righteous but that righteousness that God makes available to us who are not righteous; that righteousness of God that is granted to us as a gift in faith; that righteousness that is given to us through the righteousness of Christ, an alien righteousness, a foreign righteousness, that is granted to us for our own possession.’ Luther went on, ‘When I understood that, and when the concept of justification by faith alone burst through into my mind, suddenly it was like the doors of paradise swung open and I walked through.’ We can think, too, of a young Anglican clergyman in England during the eighteenth century who, though he had been trained in the seminary and had been ordained by the church, was cold of heart and not even a believer. One day he was standing in a crowd of people listening to a fervent preacher in Aldersgate, London. Although he wasn’t really all that interested in the sermon, somehow he seemed drawn by the words he was hearing in a sermon taken from the book of Romans. And the young man, John Wesley, said, ‘Suddenly, my heart was strangely warmed.’ As the Word of God from the book of Romans fell upon John Wesley, he was converted and later became one of the most forcible, religious reformers the world has ever known. The list of those whose lives have been changed through Paul’s letter to the Romans goes on down into our own day and includes a young Swiss theologian who was steeped in liberal theology and had been carried away by the unbelief and the anti-supernaturalism of nineteenth century theology. This young theologian wrote a book on the letter to the Romans, and called the church back to a Bible-centered theology. It was said by Karl Adam, the Roman Catholic theologian and historian, that in 1918 when Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans was published it fell like a bombshell on the playground of the theologians, as the church was reawakened once more to the centrality of the sovereignty of God. I, too, have a sense of identification with Augustine, Luther, Wesley and Barth because no book has had such a powerful impact on my life as the book of Romans. R.C. Sproul |
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The book of Romans has been influential in critical moments of church history:
But it is not only those who have become leaders in the church who have been affected by the epistle to the Romans. Ordinary Christians, too, have lived transformed lives as a result. People have often turned to the letter to the Church in Rome because Paul clearly sets out a theological framework for us to understand the Christian faith. It is a comprehensive description of the way that God offers salvation to humankind and it is 'Good News'. Above Material Copyright © 1999 R.C. Sproul |
