Romans – its impact on the church
The book of Romans is Paul’s theological Magnum Opus. Paul had written to a church he had
presumably never yet visited to ensure they were well-grounded in the
Faith. Since then, Paul’s letter to the
Roman church has affected countless people and has shaped the course of the
church.
In 386 AD, a brilliant young teacher of rhetoric living
in Milan, Italy, was in the middle of a personal crisis. He had come under the influence of the great
Bishop Ambrose of Milan, and had begun to question his own lifestyle. He was grossly indulging his flesh, including
living with a mistress, and he knew his Christian mother was grieving over her
son’s sin. In the midst of his own
personal crisis he heard a child outside his garden singing the repetitive
words “Take up and read, take up and read.”
He looked for the child, but could not locate him. Sensing this as a sign from God, he opened
the Bible and read at random from Romans 13:13-14, “Not in carousing and
drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and
jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” Saint Augustine later wrote about this in his
autobiography ‘Confessions’, “I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this
sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my
heart. All the shadows of doubt were
dispelled.”
In the early 16th Century, a young monk and
professor in Wittenburg, Germany, began a series of lectures on the Book of
Romans. He re-read 1:17, “…the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous
man shall live by faith.’ “ These words
troubled him a great deal and set him on the road to discovering that is was
not his own works which saved him, but righteousness which comes by faith. This was how Martin Luther was used by God as
the spark that started the Great Reformation.
Martin Luther later described the book of Romans, “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 the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much,
and the more it is dealt with the more precious is becomes, and the better it
tastes.”
In May of 1738, a young man sat, despondent. Previously, he had felt the call to ministry
and had come to Georgia in North America to preach to the natives there. En route, he fell into the company of a group
of Moravian Christians whose sincerity and simplicity of faith astonished
him. He wrote in his journal “I have come
to save the Indians, but oh! Who shall
save me?” He did not last long as a
missionary and returned home to contemplate his life and his faith. On May 24th, he reluctantly
attended a Christian gathering. There,
he heard a man reading aloud the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on
Romans. John Wesley wrote about his
experience there, “while he was describing the change which God works in the
heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, 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.”
Many of the early church fathers had much to say about
Romans. Its impact on the church is
incalculable.
