Video 1: Introduction and Background

hi this is dr hollinger and in this video i would like to discuss with you the introduction and background of the epistle to the romans and as we do so i wanted to say a word about the greatness of the epistle and i begin with one of the most towering figures of church history aurelius augustine augustine was born in the 4th century a.d his mother was a devout christian but his father was a rank pagan even though the family didn't have a lot of money they were able to give their son a decent education near home later augustine would leave home much to the trepidation and nervousness of his mother and he would go to carthage which was located in north africa while he was there he fell into immorality and sired an illegitimate son later he left his mistress and became involved in what he would call a whirl of vicious lovemaking augustine was filled with guilt he was filled with despair and he didn't know what to do he found himself at the home of a friend near milan italy and one day he was sitting in the garden and he heard a child singing so the story goes take up and read take up and read augustine thought this is a message from god and so he took a copy of the scripture opened it and the first place that met his gaze was romans 13 where he read these words let us behave decently as in the daytime not in orgies and drunkenness not in sexual immorality and debauchery rather clothe yourselves with the lord jesus christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature those words from romans would become instrumental in the conversion of a man who would become arguably the greatest thinker in church history when he wrote his confessions looking back on this incident augustine wrote instantly as the sentence ended by a light as it were of security infused into my heart all the gloom of doubt was vanished away if you're interested in reading a further account of this i've put some excerpts from augustine's confessions you're welcome to pause the video and read these if you would like these continue on to the next slide and to the next slide and then here's the passage from the confessions from which i am citing so augustine just becomes a great example of the greatness of the letter and the impact that it had another example of the same thing was martin luther luther was different from augustine in the sense that luther was not obsessed with sexual immorality rather luther was obsessed with trying to attain a righteousness before god that god would accept and so as luther was intent on this he became more and more frustrated part of the reason was luther had a trained legal mind in fact he was on the path to becoming perhaps one of the greatest legal minds in all of europe and luther understood that god is just god is righteous god is perfect and he requires of his creatures a perfect righteousness and so as luther strove more and more to attain that he became more and more upset because he realized he couldn't and this led luther almost to just throw his hands up in defiance against god luther would write i had no love for that holy and just god who punished sinners i was filled with secret anger against him i hated him because not content with frightening by the law and the miseries of life us wretched sinners already ruined by original sin he still further increased our tortures by the gospel well as luther continued to think about this and ponder the truth of romans it suddenly dawned on him that yes god is perfect he is righteous he does demand perfection of his creatures however the righteousness and perfection he demands is not something he expects his creatures to produce rather it is something that he will graciously give to all who believe on him when luther got this he would write when i learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from the free mercy of our lord through faith this language of saint paul was to me the true gate of paradise he would go on to write this epistle is really the chief part of the new testament and the very purest gospel and is worthy not only that every christian should know it word for word by heart but occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of his soul it can never be read or pondered too much the great john wesley was reportedly converted when he heard read luther's preface to his commentary on romans frederick goday the swiss commentator argued that every revival in church history would be connected to the truth from romans samuel coleridge an expert in english and german literature wrote i think that the epistle to the romans is the most profound work in existence william tyndale this epistle is the principle and most excellent part of the new testament and most pure gospel john stott it is the fullest plainest and grandest statement of the gospel in the new testament and then finally john calvin wrote when anyone gains knowledge of this epistle he has an entrance open to him to all the most hidden treasures of scripture so by way of introduction i think we can appreciate just how great this letter is and think if romans is the purest expression of the gospel we have the consequences of ignoring it are to our eternal peril we've got to get this right well i move on next then to the background of the book authorship the book was written and i'm going to qualify that in a moment the book was written by paul and really there's not a whole lot of debate about that the issue of discussion however revolves around an individual named tertius tertius is mentioned in romans 16 22 and notice this text i tertius who wrote this letter greet you in the lord what i believe is happening here is that paul properly speaking was the author of the book however more than likely he dictated it to tertius who then wrote it down the date of writing we would put the date of the writing of romans somewhere around a.d and if i were to get even more specific probably in the springtime of 57 and i've included here an open chronology of paul's life and by an open chronology i simply mean that there are other items we could fit into the chronology but this is just a general look at it so if romans was written in 80 57 which i think that it was you can kind of see where this would fit into paul's life and then we have this question of unity when we speak of the unity of a book we are asking the question as to whether the entire contents was written by the same person and the answer to this would be yes once more there's not a whole lot of debate on this matter so we can consider paul as the authorship of the entire letter the destination the destination obviously was to the church in rome the question though is how did the church come to be in rome we know that paul didn't found the church because at the time of the writing of romans he hadn't even been to rome yet so probably the most likely explanation is that there had been some individuals from rome who traveled to jerusalem probably were confronted with the gospel were saved returned back home and then planted the church that's probably the most likely scenario regardless the destination of course is to the church located in rome and then we have the composition of the church the church was probably made up of mostly gentiles this is because in 49 a.d the jews were expelled from rome and though they would have started coming back by this time perhaps they were in a minority in the church but we can safely say there was a mixture of gentile and jew in the book and we know that because there are parts addressed solely to gentiles and parts solely to the jews and so the composition of the book would be both gentile and jew the purpose of the book it is really important to establish the purpose of a book as we begin to study it because everything in the book is going to relate to what the purpose is and so we have to get this right and the way we determine the purpose of the book is to look at the book's content and then other extra biblical items that may give us clues onto what was going on at this place in this time and so what is the purpose of romans why did paul write it what was he trying to accomplish now i want to begin this by referring to you to what i refer to as some sub purposes and what i am doing here is when you read the literature on romans you will come across different views as to what the purpose is however a lot of times people will attach a purpose to romans when actually that's a sub-purpose that is though paul will mention it as a reason for writing it really does not encompass the entire contents of the book so i would include here some things you can glean from romans but i don't think we could say they are the actual purpose of the book which is why i refer to them as sub sub-purposes one of them is paul clearly states he plans to visit the romans again that's a reason for writing it's something he wants them to know but that does not take into account everything in the letter another sub-purpose is he requests prayer and yet another sub-purpose is he wants them to be edified so why did paul write well here are some minor reasons that he mentions but then we come to the big purpose why did paul write romans what was his major motive what is he trying to accomplish i would like to suggest to you four strands of purpose which i get from the book itself which i think when put together will give an all-encompassing idea at the purpose of the book the first is the righteousness of god now if you have taken greek before you realize we are dealing here with a genitive construction you have righteousness and then you have the noun and the genitive of god and there are several different uses of the genitive the one i would suggest here would be a subjective genitive in work in which the word righteousness is referring to an activity of god that is god is just in his dealings with all of his creatures he is just in his dealings with the gentiles he is just in his dealings with the jews paul will deal with this heavily in chapters 1 to 3 and then also in chapters 9 to 11. so the righteousness of god broadly speaking is this idea that god is just in his activities with people the second strand of purpose has to do with justification we're going to be discussing justification at length in some following videos but at this point we would simply observe that paul is going to spend a lot of material talking about the doctrine of justification and justification is a specific way in which god deals justif justly and righteously with his creatures how can god accept people without compromising his holy character well part of that is going to be answered in the doctrine of justification and then we have a jew gentile tension we are of course all aware that in our present day there can be tensions between different people groups really around the world in different countries the same was true in the first century there was tension between jews and gentiles the gentiles were looked down upon by the jews as being despicable and beyond salvation the jews were looked down on by the gentiles as being a fringe elitist group in fact as they got to know jews even more they would realize oh hey these are the chosen people of god and yet apparently god isn't doing anything with this chosen generation he must have rejected her and if god has rejected the jews then why shouldn't i reject them as well and so there's going to be a jew gentile tension common in the first century which is going to be addressed in romans for example romans 14 and 15 romans 1 2 and 3 etc all will deal with this tension and then a fourth strand of purpose and this is often overlooked by people and it's what we refer to as the spanish factor and all we mean here is that paul wanted to explain the righteousness of god to this church he wanted to explain the doctrine of justification he wanted them to be unified he wanted them to understand his gospel so that they would support his mission when he went to spain two examples of those who have caught this as pot are part of the purpose of romans uh include franz lienhart in his book the epistle to the romans he writes when paul writes to rome his mind is full of his spanish scheme that is his plans to go to rome and then in his article in bibliotheca sacra williams writes against this backdrop and the backdrop to which he is referring is spain and the jew gentile disunity against this backdrop he sat down and composed a treatise at once theological on the one hand and personal and practical on the other to show how jew and gentile fit into that purpose and plan and to exhort jewish and gentile christians to receive one another and live in harmony and so those are the four strands those are the four ideas i believe make up the purpose of romans and what i would like to do now is take those four strands and put them together into one cohesive purpose statement and this then would be my statement as to why paul wrote romans paul presents a comprehensive statement of justification by faith which is available to both jew and gentile in order to show that god is just in his dealings with both groups in order to unify them thereby gaining support for his spanish mission so that is the introduction and background to romans we are about to embark on an incredible journey of looking at perhaps the greatest mountain peak in the new testament and then here are some matters of background culminating with this purpose statement and in the next video we will begin to look at how paul argues this purpose and how he develops it in the letter itself