Jensens survey of the old testament adam 448

to a ord a perfect opportunity to choose the
righteous ways of God: special privileges,
perfect instruction, marvelous revelations,
miraculous protection, and matchless
covenants and promises. But again there was
utter and complete failure — failure so great
that when Israel chose, with others, to
crucify the Lord Jesus and refused to listen
to the voice of the Holy Spirit through the
apostles, God rejected her and scattered the
people throughout the earth, allowing them
to go on in their own blindness and
darkness.
In the book of Romans God is saying to
the readers of the whole world — Jew and
Gentile — that though they have failed to
attain a righteousness acceptable to a holy
God, this righteousness may be received as a
gift from Him, through faith, in the person
of His righteous Son. It is their only hope for
now and eternity.


II. BACKGROUND
A. AUTHOR
According to the text of 1:1, Paul was the
author. Note the three ways Paul identi es
himself in the verse. In your own words
write down what is involved in each
identi cation. Most of what is known about
Paul’s life is given to us in the book of Acts.

B. DATE WRITTEN
Paul wrote Romans from Corinth toward
the end of his third missionary journey,
around A.D. 56.
C. THE CITY OF ROME IN

A.D.

56


When Paul wrote this letter Rome was the
largest and most important city of the world
(estimated population: one to four million).
Emperor Nero had just begun to rule (A.D.
54-68), and anti-Christian persecutions had
not yet begun. The city’s population was
made up of the usual mixture of a large city:
wealth, poverty, capitalism, slavery, citizens,
aliens, religion, worldliness. There was a
large number of Jews living in Rome at the
time, for about a dozen synagogues were
located throughout the city. Hiebert writes,
“Around the various synagogues of the Jews
there gradually grew up a considerable
following of Gentiles more or less in active
sympathy with their religion. Here, as
elsewhere in the Empire, these ‘God-fearers’
furnished fertile ground for the spread of
Christianity.”1

D. ORIGINAL READERS
The letter was addressed to the saints in
Rome (1:7), a mixed group of Jews and
Gentiles, the latter group probably
constituting the majority (cf. 1:13; 2:17).
These Christians had migrated to Rome from
various parts of the Mediterranean world.
Some no doubt were converts of Paul’s and
Peter’s itinerant ministries. It is possible also
that included in the number were “visitors
from Rome” (Acts 2:10) who had been
present at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost
and had returned to Rome with the message
of Christ. Paul had not as yet visited the
church at Rome when he wrote the epistle.
E. OCCASION AND PURPOSE OF WRITING
Paul had various things in mind in writing
this letter. Among them was his desire to