Romans: At His Feet Studies

By Hope A Blanton and Christine B Gordon

If you're a woman who feels like you don't have time to study the Bible in a deep and meaningful way, this is the book for you. Romans is a combination of Chris's ability to unpack scripture in deep, practical ways and Hope's ability to create questions that guide the reader and apply God's word. Designed to be completed in j

• Language: English
• Publisher: 19Baskets, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781946862068

Hope A Blanton

Hope A. Blanton, LMSW, is wife to Ray and mother of three. She earned her master's in clinical social work at Temple University. Currently she works as a counselor in San Antonio. She loves good food, making people laugh, and being outside.

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Study 1

The History Behind the Pages of Romans

Observation Questions

1. When you think about reading the Bible, or sit down to read it, what are the most common thoughts you have? What do you think has led you to have this type of relationship with the Bible?

2. Do you think God’s view of you or his love for you is based on your discipline, or lack of it, when it comes the time you personally spend reading the Bible?

3. What do you think are the themes of Romans (either from reading it or hearing about it)?

Paul wrote Romans around 57 AD while in the city of Corinth during his third missionary journey. Paul had never been to Rome, but he had apparently tried to get there before. While he was collecting money for the church in Jerusalem from other churches, he was ultimately planning to go to Spain. The trip from Jerusalem to Spain would have been a long one for Paul’s day, and Rome was situated about two-thirds of the way to Spain. The city would have been a home base for his travels to the western frontier of the Roman Empire. He needed the Romans’ fellowship, their help, their encouragement, and their financial support. Paul probably wrote to prepare the Romans for his visit.

Rome was a large, crowded city in the first century AD with a population of approximately one million people in an area less than ten square miles. (By comparison, the island of Manhattan, New York, has 1.6 million people and three times the space. Think of how crowded Manhattan is!) There were estimated to be between forty and fifty thousand Jews in the city at this time, and though we don’t know how the church in Rome began, it is probable that there were present at Pentecost Jewish Romans who then returned to their city and started a church at a local synagogue.

The earliest house churches in Rome would have been organized around the synagogue and would have felt very Jewish culturally. In 49 AD the Emperor Claudius kicked the Jews out of Rome, including the Jewish Christians who had established the first church there. The Gentiles who remained would have continued to meet and grow without Jewish input or influence. People reached with the gospel who became new believers at the time would have been Gentiles as well.

Claudius died in 54 AD, and the edict lapsed. Jewish Christians came back into the city of Rome, but the church they found would have felt foreign to them. The law-observing Jewish Christians would have found much conflict with the Gentile Christians, who lived free of the restrictions of Mosaic law. These were brothers and sisters in Christ, for sure, but they had had dramatically different experiences of working out their faith. Imagine the fights, the judgment, the confusion that must have resulted.

Paul’s letter would have arrived soon after Jews began filtering back into the city, and so, considering the makeup of the church there, he weaves together the two dominant themes of Romans: 1) the justification of guilty sinners by God’s grace alone in Christ through faith alone, regardless of status or works, and 2) a redefinition of the people of God, no longer according to descent, circumcision, or culture but according to faith in Jesus, so that all believers are the children of Abraham regardless of ethnic origin or religious practice. Knowing who made up the church of Rome, we can better understand why Paul so passionately writes about these themes.

But the themes in Romans are not important for just the first-century church there. In assessing the importance of the book of Romans, John Calvin said, When one gains a knowledge of this Epistle, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture.

Reflection Questions

4. Did any of the historical background of Romans surprise you? If so, what and why?

5. What type of tensions and conversations do you imagine would have taken place between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians?

6. As a Jew, many rituals would have been central and defining to your relationship with God. What must it have felt like to redefine your relationship with God through Jesus instead of these familiar traditions and acts?

7. As you read and think about the first dominant theme of Romans—the justification of guilty sinners by God’s grace alone in Christ through faith alone, regardless of status or works—which part of that phrase does your heart long to know more about? Which part do you have a hard time believing applies to you? Why?

8. As you read and think about the second dominant theme of Romans—a redefinition of the people of God, no longer according to descent, circumcision, or culture but according to faith in Jesus, so that all believers are the children of Abraham regardless of ethnic origin or religious practice—how does this shape your view of whom the gospel is for (i.e., your next door neighbor, brother, Muslim acquaintance, agnostic co-worker, kid’s teacher)? Whom do you consider to be the people of God?

Reflections, curiosities, frustrations:

Study 2

I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel

Read Romans 1:1-17

Observation Questions

1. What phrases or concepts are used in verses 1-5 to describe or explain the gospel of God?

2. What is Paul being prevented from doing? What is Paul hoping to give to the Romans as well as receive from them?

3. What are the two reasons Paul is not ashamed of the gospel?

In the last study we read about the two weighty themes of Romans: the justification of guilty sinners by God’s grace and a redefinition of the people of God. We might be tempted to think of the bearer of such wonderful truths as quite impressive—even beyond temptation or living a higher or more beautiful life than we, normal believers. On the contrary, as we will see in these few verses, God chose a man whose struggles were not so different from our own to bring these amazing truths of the gospel to the Roman church.

Verses 1-4. servant. The word doulos is better translated slave. This is us: literally, slaves of Jesus.

Verse 5. to bring about the obedience of faith. This is the response the gospel demands. The New International Version translates this the obedience that comes from faith, like the faith of Abraham, who by faith obeyed. This faith is not only an emotion but a commitment of total submission. Paul would not have recognized the dichotomy that some people articulate today that Jesus is their savior but not their lord; one must lead to the other.

for the sake of his name. Name here, as usual in the Bible, means character or reputation. The highest of all motives—and Paul’s motive here—is not a passion for the lost, concern for our children, justice for the weak and oppressed, obedience to Jesus, nor love for the church. It is zeal for the glory of Jesus Christ. As John R. Stott writes, We should be ‘jealous’ for the honor of his name—troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honor and glory which are due to it (53).

Verse 7. saints. The term here includes no trace of perfectionism as we would think of it in our modern culture. We are saints because God has set us apart and made us saints, not because we get it right.

Verse 8. The fact that there was a church in Rome would have been known by other churches, and it must have encouraged them greatly to think that at the center of such a huge and powerful empire, in a city that brought awe to those on the outskirts of that empire, there were brothers and sisters who shared their faith.

Verse 10-14. Who was Paul to think he had a contribution to make to this great city? He was, according to tradition, an ugly little guy with beetle brows, bandy legs, a bald [head], a hooked nose, bad eyesight, and no great rhetorical gifts (Stott, 58). He was, as he states, under obligation, which is better translated, I am a debtor. What Paul means is that Jesus had entrusted him with the gospel for the Romans, Jewish and Gentile. He owed this debt to them, to faithfully preach the good news.

Verse 16. ashamed. There is no reason for Paul to speak of not being ashamed of the gospel unless at some point he had been tempted to be ashamed. Here is the great apostle, the author of much of the New Testament, acknowledging the temptation to keep quiet or be ashamed of the gospel. We are in good company when we battle this.

Verse 17. righteousness of God [from God]. Righteousness is a divine quality that represents God’s character. But it is also a divine gift. In Philippians 3:9 Paul describes this same righteousness as the righteousness from God that depends on faith. It comes from God. In Romans 4 Paul writes of righteousness being credited to us. It is something totally given to us. The word righteousness means right standing. It is a positional word. It is God taking the initiative to put us in right standing with himself. Do you hear your own effort or striving in this sentence? No? That’s because there is none. Your rightness with God is his doing and his doing alone.

Reflection Questions

4. Why do you think Paul is reminding the Romans of obedience, sainthood, and God’s glory and righteousness at the beginning of his letter to them?

5. In verse 5 what does the phrase to bring about the obedience of faith or the obedience that comes from faith mean? Have you viewed faith as more of an emotion or a commitment and why?

6. The reputation of the church in Rome had spread to other churches, encouraging them that Jesus’ church could grow in such a place, under such conditions. Can you think of a time when you heard of the gospel