Romans

The Letter from Yeshua's Emissary Sha’ul(Paul) to the Messianic Community in Rome

Chapter 1 - (CJB)*

A Study to Help New and Young Christians

Chapter 1:1-32 (CJB)

1. From: Sha’ul, a slave of the Messiah Yeshua, an emissary because I was called and set apart for the Good News of God.

2. God promised this Good News in advance through his prophets in the Tanakh.

3. It concerns his Son — he is descended from David physically;

4. he was powerfully demonstrated to be Son of God spiritually, set apart by his having been resurrected from the dead; he is Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord.

5. Through him we received grace and were given the work of being an emissary on his behalf promoting trust-grounded obedience among all the Gentiles,

6. including you, who have been called by Yeshua the Messiah.

7. To: All those in Rome whom God loves, who have been called, who have been set apart for him: Grace to you and shalom from God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

8. First, I thank my God through Yeshua the Messiah for all of you, because the report of your trust is spreading throughout the whole world.

9. For God, whom I serve in my spirit by spreading the Good News about his Son, is my witness that I regularly remember you

10. in my prayers; and I always pray that somehow, now or in the future, I might, by God’s will, succeed in coming to visit you.

11. For I long to see you, so that I might share with you some spiritual gift that can make you stronger —

12. or, to put it another way, so that by my being with you, we might, through the faith we share, encourage one another.

13. Brothers, I want you to know that although I have been prevented from visiting you until now, I have often planned to do so, in order that I might have some fruit among you, just as I have among the other Gentiles.

14. I owe a debt to both civilized Greeks and uncivilized people, to both the educated and the ignorant;

15. therefore I am eager to proclaim the Good News also to you who live in Rome.

16. For I am not ashamed of the Good News, since it is God’s powerful means of bringing salvation to everyone who keeps on trusting, to the Jew especially, but equally to the Gentile.

17. For in it is revealed how God makes people righteous in his sight; and from beginning to end it is through trust — as the Tanakh puts it, “But the person who is righteous will live his life by trust.”

18. What is revealed is God’s anger from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who in their wickedness keep suppressing the truth;

19. because what is known about God is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them.

20. For ever since the creation of the universe his invisible qualities — both his eternal power and his divine nature — have been clearly seen, because they can be understood from what he has made. Therefore, they have no excuse;

21. because, although they know who God is, they do not glorify him as God or thank him. On the contrary, they have become futile in their thinking; and their undiscerning hearts have become darkened.

22. Claiming to be wise, they have become fools!

23. In fact, they have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for mere images, like a mortal human being, or like birds, animals or reptiles!

24. This is why God has given them up to the vileness of their hearts’ lusts, to the shameful misuse of each other’s bodies.

25. They have exchanged the truth of God for falsehood, by worshipping and serving created things, rather than the Creator — praised be he for ever. Amen.

26. This is why God has given them up to degrading passions; so that their women exchange natural sexual relations for unnatural;

27. and likewise the men, giving up natural relations with the opposite sex, burn with passion for one another, men committing shameful acts with other men and receiving in their own persons the penalty appropriate to their perversion.

28. In other words, since they have not considered God worth knowing, God has given them up to worthless ways of thinking; so that they do improper things.

29. They are filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and vice; stuffed with jealousy, murder, quarrelling, dishonesty and ill-will; they are gossips,

30. slanderers, haters of God; they are insolent, arrogant and boastful; they plan evil schemes; they disobey their parents;

31. they are brainless, faithless, heartless and ruthless.

32. They know well enough God’s righteous decree that people who do such things deserve to die; yet not only do they keep doing them, but they applaud others who do the same.

Study - Chapter 1

Let me start this study with a personal note. I have found the book of Romans to a great help in understanding what is expected of me as a Christian as well as what I can expect of God our Father to do in me as I follow the leading of His Holy Spirit. As I read through this book I find it can divided into three parts.

(i) Starting from Chapters 1 to Chapter 8, explains what is the legal position of a Born Again One, the Christian's legal stand with a God of Justus and Mercy.
(ii) Chapters 9 through 11 is a special section that relates to the Jewish people.
(iii) The last part, Chapters 12 to 16 deals with what a Christian can expect from God our Father because we are Children of God.

There is another point that needs to be made at the beginning of this study. Paul the Apostle was trained by one of The Jews' leading scholars Gamliel, who was a Pharisee, a teacher of The Law of Moses. Therefore Paul understood how to state a Legal argument in regards to the Gospel. So when Paul is making a case he covers a lot of information to make sure the point is fully covered.

With this is in mind let's follow his case: -

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Ch 1: verses, 1-7,

Paul introduces himself to the Christians that are in Rome. You will note that these Christians are both Jewish as well as Gentile, non jewish. Part of what Paul states is the Jesus was leagally a decendant of King Davd and therfore can be given the Title of Messiah. Yeshua, is the Hebrew word for Jesus. Tanakh, is the Hebrew word for The Scriptures, or the Old or New Testaments.

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Ch 1: verses, 8 - 15,

Paul continues to address the Christians in Rome explaining how he have a great desire to see them and encourage them in the faith that they have received. Adding that he has planned to come to them but has been prevented from doing so.

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Ch 1: Verses, 16 and 17,

Here Paul states what he sees as the Power of the Gospel. That Trust (Faith) in the message that God through the work of The Cross and Death and Resurection of Christ we have confidence of our lives being changed in to The Life Of Christ. As The Scriptures says, as the Tanakh puts it, “But the person who is righteous will live his life by trust.”

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Ch 1: 18 - 32,

Now Paul starts on an explanation of where Mankind is outside of the Gospel. Unregerate Man is anyone that has not received the Salvation that is is offered through the Free Gift given to us by God through accepting what Jesus's Death and Resurrection has purchased for us.

Your will or willingness to do anything is the most precious thing to God than anything else. God will never cross your will or force you to do anything that you do want to do. This is why when you see the value of God's Free Gift of Salvation, we trust (have faith that it true), we are able to receive the Transforming Power to become like Christ.

Verse 18 through 32, state that from the beginning of time there has been a witness of God's desire to have a meaningful relation with Man. All that it would have taken to accept He existed could be seen in the very wonderful works of how the world was being run.

The sad thing is that the willfulness of Man to want to have all the control over their life, the sin of Adam to want the Knowledge of Good and Evil, blinded them to God's Outstretched Hand.

So God left them to their own devices which is laid out very clearly in the following verses. Such depravity it hard to believe that all such could be possible. It just shows how badly Satan wanted to turn Man away from God that he, Satan, brings these things to seen in Unregenerate Man.

I want to say that this may be disturbing but as I have stated above Paul is setting out a legal case. So the starting point needs to show clearly just how someone can be so far from God yet with just a turning around and seeing God's Love and Free Gift of Salvation they will be changed.

As we move into the next Chapter we will continue to see Paul's Case for having a Belief, Trust in the Gospel which, makes all the difference.

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(CJB)* The Complete Jewish Bible" used with permission.