Introductions to Romans - by Ken Clezy

You should never ask some questions, like: which of her children does a mother love best? If I ask which is the most important book in the Bible (after the Gospels) you may say that ‘s another improper question, because it’s all God’s word. If I push you, perhaps you might say, ‘Well, probably not Obadiah.’

If we judge a book by the influence it has had on Christian history, Paul’s letter to the Romans stands out as the most important. About 350 AD it transformed the man some know as Saint Augustine. He was a priest, a university lecturer and a notorious womaniser until God spoke to him through Ro 13:13-14. He became one of the greatest theologians of all time. Even at our Church, we owe much to him about how we think of God.

Just over 500 years ago Martin Luther, another priest and lecturer on Romans saw that we are justified (declared ‘Not guilty’) by faith in Jesus Christ, not by our works. Previously he had what some say was an over-sensitive conscience, so that his penitence led him to climb umpteen church steps on his knees (as some do to this day – I saw women do it in Mexico City.) Luther’s many attempts to be good and to pay for his sins by hurting himself in this and other ways gave him no spiritual peace or satisfaction.

Luther’s understanding of Romans and his translation of the Bible into German became the basis of Protestantism in Germany and elsewhere (this church included) and was ultimately responsible for western democracy. Sure, he had his faults; his antisemitism would land him in jail today.

John and Charles Wesley had a godly mother who tried her best to have her children understand and respond to the Gospel, but nevertheless they went to Oxford unsaved and with no idea of what it is to have peace with God. They graduated in theology and went to America as ministers of the Gospel to settlers and American Indians. Their dry legalistic religion helped nobody. Downcast, they went home, and during a storm at sea were astonished by other Christians’ confidence that God was in control. The Wesleys’ God was distant, but these people seemed to know him.

John Wesley met the group again at a meeting in Aldersgate Street where somebody spoke about Luther’s Preface to Romans. Subsequently he wrote:

‘At about a quarter to nine, while he was describing the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, in Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’

Wesley was transformed. He became Britain’s greatest evangelist ever, preached many thousands of sermons up hill and down dale, saw millions accept Christ, and is regarded by secular historians as responsible for saving England from its own version of the horrors of the French Revolution.

John Bunyan who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress is among many others greatly blessed by studying Romans seriously.

You too?