“First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” (Romans 1:8–15, ESV)

N.T. Wright gives some very helpful historical background regarding Paul’s letter to the Romans. Unlike some of the churches Paul wrote to, the church in Rome was not founded by Paul. He doesn’t have direct and obvious authority there. This perhaps explains the length of Paul’s greeting and the obvious diplomatic effort in his approach to the letter. Paul’s audience in this letter was rather unique, especially relative to what some of us might think of when we hear the word “church”. Likely, this was a quite small group of believers living in a poorer part of town, meeting in a few small homes for worship, fellowship, and instruction. Though initially a group of Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah, the gospel (as it’s prone to do) spread beyond those ethnic and cultural boundaries and the church soon became a fellowship of both gentiles and Jewish believers.

A few years prior to Paul’s writing, the Roman emperor had expelled all the Jews from Rome, leaving the remaining Christian community as an exclusively gentile fellowship for a number of years. After several years of non-Jewish influence, the non-Jewish community of believers would have developed an approach to their faith absent some of the distinctly Jewish flavors. Tom Wright goes on to describe:

“…it would have been easy for them to suppose that the new message had, as it were, left the Jewish world behind. God had done a new thing. Israel may have been the place where it all began, but now that had been left behind. All those rules and regulations, the law with its taboos, dietary restrictions, special holy days … all of it was gone. Christianity was now for the Gentile world. So they might have thought.” (Wright, T. 2004. Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8. Both volumes include glossaries. (8). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.)

When the Jews were once again allowed back into Rome, it is easy to speculate the various questions and even tensions that would have emerged in the freshly integrated community of both Jewish and gentile believers in Jesus. Important questions needed to be answered. Pressing issues needed to be resolved regarding Israel and the Church, grace and the Law, and more besides. Paul isn’t answering every question. He is addressing specific issues. To the degree that we can understand the context and the nature of those issues, we will better understand his answers. As we move forward in the rest of Paul’s letter, it will help us to keep this in mind, as Wright goes on to say:

“It’s important that, all the way through, we hold in our minds a historical picture of the Romans’ church and its questions, rather than imagining that it was a church just like one of ours.” (Wright, T. 2004. Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8. Both volumes include glossaries. (8). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.)

This is the group of believers Paul longs to visit. He wants to impart something spiritual to them of value. He hopes even to, with their partnership, move beyond Rome and take the gospel to Spain. He doesn’t want alienate any group present within the community, Jew or Gentile, so he makes it clear that his message, calling, and burden, extends past any ethnic, cultural, social, or religious boundaries. He doesn’t want to alienate them with an assumption of apostolic authority that isn’t warranted, so he is careful to communicate that though he is coming with a hope to impart, he is also coming with a humility to receive from them.

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