Read: Romans 1:1-7 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
We’re not entirely sure why St Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans. Some have said it is like a great ‘summary’ of all his theology, an attempt to set out his teaching once and for all. Unlike his other letters, written to churches Paul had helped to set up and which sought his guidance as their founder apostle, the Letter to the Romans is written to a church which had no existing formal relationship with him. The Roman Christians knew of Paul, certainly – he was famous enough. But most of them didn’t know him personally.
In that respect, you and I today are rather like the first readers of Romans. We know of Paul by reputation and by his teaching, but only through what he has written. We who live two millennia after Paul don’t know him through any personal acquaintance. So as we read Romans this Lent, we can rest assured that the strangeness with which it confronts us would have been shared by its first recipients!
And yet to us, as to those early Roman Christians, Paul opens with a bold assertion: you, like me, he says, are called to belong to Jesus Christ; and you, like me, he says, are called to be saints. And so whoever you are – first-century Roman Christian or twenty-first-century British Christian – what Paul has to say in Romans is for you. Whether separated from him by the geography of the Mediterranean (like his letter’s first readers) or even by two thousand years of history (as we are) what Paul is about to set forth in his letter is just as relevant. This is a message for all Christians throughout all time and in all places. And that includes you and me.
Pray that this Lent God will deepen our knowledge of Christ and our love for him as we read what St Paul has to say.
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.