The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: Have you ever thought that certain people were so evil and corrupt they could never possibly get saved? Well, during the Apostle Paul's time, the city of Rome was a corrupt, pagan city. Yet, many Romans were being made new in Jesus Christ every day.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. James Boice, teaching you to think and act biblically. Today, we continue our new series in the Book of Romans, Part One: An Introduction, by examining what Christianity in Rome looked like.

Christians in Rome had to live out their faith in the midst of a pagan culture. Yet, their cultural context was not much different from ours today. Let's turn now to Romans Chapter 1 and see how they were able to apply Christian teaching to their everyday context.

One of the things the Book of Romans is, is an ancient letter. Ancient letters were written something in the way we write an inter-office memo. That is, they began with three elements. First, there was the name of the writer. Then there was the name of the person or persons to whom he was writing, and then there was a greeting. And it was only after those first three things are out of the way that you find the body of the letter—this or any other letter.

There's a very simple example of that in the 23rd chapter of Acts when the commander of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem is writing to Governor Felix about the Apostle Paul. His name was Claudius Lysias, and the start of his letter just says, "Claudius Lysias to his most excellent Governor Felix, greetings."

There are all three parts. The first is his name, Claudius Lysias, the second the name of the governor, and then the greeting, which in that case at least is exactly that: the very simple word "greetings." Now, that is the form that the Apostle Paul uses as he writes the introduction to Romans.

And we've already seen the first part of that: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ." So far, so good. He begins simply enough. But Paul, just because he is so filled with his theme, never lets it go just like that. When Paul writes, you always get a great deal more.

And so when he begins to explain who he is, saying he's a servant of Jesus Christ and adding "called to be an apostle and set apart to the gospel of God," he comes to that great phrase "the gospel of God." And he's so excited about that that he begins to explain what the gospel of God is.

He says that it's a gospel that God promised beforehand in the Holy Scriptures, that is, it was told about in the Old Testament. And it concerns His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who had two natures: one, a human nature—he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh—but he had a divine nature according to the spirit of holiness. He was declared to be the Son of God with power, demonstrated by the resurrection. That's the gospel.

We read that and we think as we get to that point, "Paul, you're losing track. You're already well into the theme of your letter." Although it's true that he's into the theme of the letter, he's not lost track. He's still giving a formal introduction.

So at that point, he brings it back to where he started, that is to himself and his apostleship. He says, "Yes, and it's through this Jesus and for his name's sake that we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles."

And then he moves on at last to the final points of that classical introduction: "to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints." Now the greeting: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ."

It's a bit like a sine wave in mathematics. It starts on a low note: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ." It soars as he begins to talk about the gospel, and then it drops off again as he talks about the church at Rome to which he's writing. And yet these last portions here—this business of the church and the greeting—are not uninteresting.

And the reason they're not uninteresting is that this church in Rome is not uninteresting and what Paul has to say about it is not uninteresting. We know that this church was a very important church. It already is. Paul is writing about the year AD 58 or 59, probably in the course of that winter.

That is, it's less than 30 years since Jesus Christ was crucified and was raised from the dead. And yet here in the center of the Roman Empire in Rome, so many miles away from Jerusalem where all of this began, there's already a group of Christians meeting. Over the years it began to grow. It became increasingly strong, extremely influential, and then eventually, unfortunately also corrupt.

And the church of Rome remains a powerful force in Christendom even today. Now, it raises the question concerning the origins of this church. Where did it come from, this great church in Rome? We have to begin with negatives, and one negative is that it obviously was not founded by the Apostle Paul.

The Apostle Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. Rome was a Gentile city. We might have expected that Paul would have been the one to found the church in Rome, but in point of fact, that isn't the way it happened. We know that because Paul himself says so.

When he wrote this letter to the church at Rome, there were already Christians there. And Paul says in the context of the letter—indeed, in the next section of this introduction—that he had wanted to go there for many, many years but had been kept from doing it.

He doesn't say why he was kept from doing it, but we should assume it was because of his other work. He was planting churches in Ephesus and Corinth and Thessalonica and Philippi and all those places, and it took time to do that. And although he wanted to get on to Rome—he knew the strategic importance of Rome and wanted to establish a sound Christian witness there at the heart of the Roman Empire—he couldn't do it because the other tasks kept him busy.

So we know at least that the church wasn't founded by Paul. The Roman Catholic tradition and a firm belief that the church at Rome was founded by the Apostle Peter, that he was the first Pope. Now, I don't think you have to say, as some Protestants have said undoubtedly in reaction to Catholic claims, that Peter was never at Rome.

Matter of fact, I think there is some evidence—not conclusive, but some evidence—that Peter died in Rome, was martyred there. Certainly, that's the early tradition of the church, and that doesn't always mean a whole lot. But there is an early document among the collection of writings called the Apostolic Fathers; it's called 1st Clement. The full title is the First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians.

And in there, the martyrdom of Peter and Paul are mentioned jointly. The context is this: Clement is writing about jealousy and envy, and he's making the point that that has always been great damage among the people of God. And he gives some examples of it. He begins in ancient times: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Joseph. He always does it in pairs.

And then he gives examples of modern times, and the latest of his modern examples—that is, people that come right up to his own generation—are the examples of Peter and Paul, who he says were martyred for their stand as a result of the jealousy of other people.

He knows a great deal about it. The fact that he talks in detail shows that he has firsthand knowledge of that. And therefore, since Clement lived in Rome and since Paul was martyred in Rome and since he links the two of these together, it's natural to think that the martyrdom of Peter really did take place there and that's what this is implying.

As I say, it's not conclusive, but it does seem to indicate that. That, however, is not the same thing as saying that Peter founded the church in Rome. And when you begin to look at the evidence for that, it seems to be quite on the other side. The Book of Romans is itself strong evidence.

For example, if you go to the end of the Book of Romans to Chapter 16, you find in that chapter a long list of greetings that Paul sends to people whom he knows and who are living in Rome. A long, long list. It's as if he's listing everybody he can think of that he knows that has any connection with the Roman church.

The name of Peter is strikingly absent from the list. If Peter were there, Paul knew him. It's hard to think that Paul wouldn't have mentioned this other great apostle. Moreover, in the chapter before there, when Paul is explaining his procedure in preaching the gospel, he says that it had always been his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known so he wouldn't build on someone else's foundation.

Now, if he knew that Peter had founded the church and the church in Rome had gotten its early teaching from Peter, it's hard to understand how he could say that without some sort of qualification. He'd have to say, "except of course in your case, I know you've been well taught by Peter" or something like that.

He doesn't do that, and it's strong evidence, I think, for the fact that Peter did not found the church, though he probably came there later and was martyred in Rome. Well then, we ask the question: if the church in Rome was not founded by the great apostle to the Gentiles, namely Paul, and it was not founded by the great apostle to the Jewish people, namely Peter, how then was the church in Rome founded?

We don't have the answer to that. We have to say we really don't know, but there is a suggestion of how it might have happened in the second chapter of Acts. The second chapter of Acts tells us about Pentecost, and one thing it says is that at Pentecost on that day in Jerusalem, there were people present from many, many different nations of the empire.

And it gives a long list—there are 15 or 20 of them. And in part of that list, it says, "Yes, and also visitors from Rome, both Jews and God-fearers," that is, Gentiles who had been influenced by Judaism. Now, it calls them visitors from Rome. It doesn't say that of the others.

The others might very well have been living there, but in the case of Rome especially, it says "visitors from Rome." Now, if they were visitors from Rome, we're to think probably that after the Jewish feast days, after Pentecost, after the preaching of the gospel, after the response of many—3,000 being added to the church on that particular day—some at least of these visitors returned to the capital.

And if they returned to the capital as Christians, perhaps in one another's company, they inevitably founded Christian congregations there—house churches—and began to worship and establish a community, a special body of people at the heart of this great capital city.

Moreover, what happened in that case must have happened many other times as well. There was a great deal of travel in the Roman Empire. It was much easier than we suppose. The Romans in the years before this, the decades before this, had built good roads and had cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, so there was easy travel by land and by sea.

Paul was busy in the Greek areas establishing churches. People were undoubtedly traveling back and forth from these churches, these cities to Rome because Rome was the center of the empire. As they went, they would have linked up with Christians in the capital, and some would have moved there and the church grew and grew also by the witness of these early Christians.

That's the way it must have happened. And it's really a remarkable thing, you see, because here was a church in Rome of all places. When we think of Rome today, we usually look back on it through eyes made misty by our admiration of the classical period.

And we think of it as a glorious city, the imperial city of the Caesars with its magnificent marble buildings and statuary and treasures. And of course, it was all that. But it was also a pagan city. It was a city known for its vice, its licentiousness, its corruption. Even the Roman historians were ashamed of the kind of things that went on regularly in Rome, and even among the Caesars.

And yet, here in the midst of all this corruption, God was establishing, without any great leadership from the apostles, a community of people who were made new by Jesus Christ and who met together to worship him and live for him in a way that made them different from anything around.

So that's the first interesting thing. Now, the second interesting thing about this conclusion to Paul's opening introduction is how these Christians in Rome got to be Christians in the first place. You see, that's a second question. I asked first of all: how did the church become established? That's kind of a mechanical thing, how did it actually happen?

Now I ask the spiritual question: how did these people whom God used to start the church in Rome, establish it, actually get to be Christians? Here Paul gives an answer, an answer which applies not only to the Christians in Rome but to Christians everywhere. He says four things about them.

First of all, he says that they were called to belong to Jesus Christ. Now, that word "called" is going to occur again in the next verse: "to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints." It's exactly the same word, as I said a moment ago, but it's used with a different emphasis in each verse, so these are actually different points that Paul is making.

In the Greek text, the first of these phrases actually says "the called of Jesus Christ." Now, some people have translated that "called by Jesus Christ." That isn't wrong, of course. Jesus said that he was the great shepherd of the sheep, and one of the things he was doing was calling his sheep. He called them by name, and they came to him and they became part of one great flock over which he was the shepherd.

That is proper in terms of that imagery. It is, however, a bit unusual because generally in the New Testament, and especially in the writings of Paul, the church is not said to be established by Jesus—that is, by his call—but by the call of God the Father. God the Father calls individuals to faith in Christ. That's the way it's usually stated.

What most people think this means—and the New International Version translators obviously felt this as well—is that the phrase actually refers not to an act of Jesus Christ calling people but to the fact that, having been called, those who are called belong to him. That is, they're his. That's what makes them Christians in the first place.

And that's why the translators say "who are called to belong to Jesus Christ." That's the emphasis. It's what a Christian is. A Christian is a Christ-one, one who belongs to Jesus. And so we have to ask that in a personal way. You may be a Baptist by background, or a Roman Catholic by background, or a Presbyterian by background, Methodist, whatever it may be. You may come from an independent church background.

That isn't what makes you a Christian. The question is: do you belong to Jesus Christ? Are you linked up with him? Is he your Lord? Is he part of you, as his life within? That's what makes people Christians, and of course, that's the only thing that makes the difference. That's why these Christians in Rome were different and had the impact upon the world that they did.

So that's the first thing Paul says. Then secondly, in verse seven, he says that they're loved by God, or the beloved of God. Now, the first phrase identifies them. By belonging to Jesus Christ, they are Christians. This now begins to say how they came to belong to Jesus Christ. And how is it?

Well, it's because Paul says God set His love upon them. This isn't some bland phrase, as if Paul were simply saying, "Well, you all know that God is love and God loves everybody, and you're part of the somebodies that God loves, therefore you're loved by God." That isn't the way the Bible speaks of the love of God.

Oh, there is a kind of general benevolence of God. It's called common grace in theology. It means that God gives life and health and protection and so forth to people generally. But when it uses that word "love," it uses it in an exclusive sense to mean a love which is set upon an individual so that as a result of being loved by God in that way, the person is brought out of sin and brought to faith in Jesus Christ.

This is what Paul is speaking of. People say, "Well now, why is it that God loves certain individuals? It must be because of something in them." And the answer is no, it's not because of anything in them at all. What possible thing could there be in a sinful human being, such as the Bible describes, that would make God love them for themselves?

Some may say, "Well, it must be because of some good in the individual, good that is foreseen or perhaps even good that is seen as a tiny little seed—perhaps a seed of faith. That's what God sees, that's why He loves them." Pray tell, how could there be any good if it is true of all of us, as Paul is going to say two chapters further on: "All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."

You say, "Well, then God must have foreseen what they were able to do, and haven't done it yet but they might be able to do it." And the answer to that is: how could God foresee them being able to do anything if, as Paul says in the second chapter of Ephesians, they're all dead in trespasses and sins? A corpse can't do anything; of course, it doesn't respond, it cannot accomplish anything for itself.

You see, the reason God sets His love upon some people is that God loves them. That's all. You say, "But there must be more to it than that." And the answer is no, nothing more to it than that. That is just what God does. You know how God says it in the Book of Deuteronomy? Moses is writing there for God and he's trying to explain the love of God to the people of Israel and he says, "Why is it that God has set his love upon you? It's not because you're more numerous than any people, because you're the fewest of all people. Why is it then that God loves you?" And he answers, "It's because God loves you."

You see, that's all that can be said. And you know, that's wonderful. Sometimes we get hung up on that because it involves the doctrine of election, and election becomes an intellectual, theological puzzle for us. But it's far more wonderful than that. It's just a wonderful thing to know that an individual, a Christian, is loved by God.

And that is particularly so because the world does not love us. Matter of fact, the world doesn't even love itself. The world is bent on self-destruction. It doesn't love itself, it doesn't love others, and it certainly doesn't love Christians. And think of these poor Christians in Rome. They might have been living in a day when they were still small enough that people were ignoring them.

But citizens of Rome did not love them. The Emperor certainly did not love them. The time was coming when they were going to be the victim of every cruel whim of every pagan Emperor that sat upon the throne, and they would be thrown into the arena, they would be killed by the lions, they would be set on fire as torches. These are the people to whom Paul is writing.

And yet you see, he can say to them, "You are loved by God. You may not be loved by anybody else, but you're loved by God, and that's what really matters in the final analysis. Let men do their worst. Let the hatred of the human race roll over this new humanity like a tidal wave. It doesn't matter. Those who are Christians are loved by God, and that love is an eternal, sustaining, strengthening love. And those who are loved by God will be with Jesus Christ in glory in the end." That, you see, is a very great teaching.

But that's only the second thing. The third thing is in this repetition of the word "called." Now, it's the same word, as I said a moment ago, same word you find in verse six. But here it's used in a different way. It doesn't mean something different, but the emphasis is different. Earlier, the emphasis was upon the fact that they were called to belong to Jesus Christ. It's speaking of their identity.

Now he's talked about the love of God, that is the love that God sets upon men and women to draw them to himself, and now he begins to talk about the drawing—how that happened—and he uses the word "called." Because God loves them, he calls them. In theology, this is termed the effectual call. It's called the effectual call to distinguish it from a general call.

There is a general call; that is the call that goes out with the preaching of the gospel. It corresponds to what I was talking about when I was talking about obedience or the demand for obedience that is mentioned in the previous verse. God commands all men everywhere to repent. They don't do it, but he commands them to do it. There is a general call in which, through the preaching of the gospel...