The Righteousness of God

Romans is likely the clearest, most comprehensive summary of the gospel and of its revolutionary implications we have in all of Scripture. But to the apostle Paul who wrote it, Romans is a personal and urgent appeal to everyday Christians who need to know God and follow Jesus. In this first session, we discuss the purpose of Romans and its main thesis about the power of the gospel and the “righteousness of God.”

We can’t hear the good news of the gospel until we first know the bad news. The apostle Paul begins the book of Romans with a hard discussion on the sinful corruption of humanity. In this session, we’ll discuss what Paul has to say about this corruption, both where it comes from and how it distorts us.

We live during a divided time, and it is instinctual for many of us to divide our world into the “good” and “bad,” the “righteous” and “wicked.” It is easy to think that having the right opinions make us better than those we disagree with. But according to Paul, there are none who escape the judgment. The line between good and evil runs not through parties or classes, but through every human heart.

As we arrive in Romans 3, the central dilemma animating Paul’s gospel is clear. On the one hand, humanity has fallen into sin and corruption and has provoked the righteous indignation of God. On the other hand, God created humanity out of love and does not wish to abandon his creation to destruction. In this session, we explore the solution to this dilemma, which enables God to be “both just and the justifier.”

Justification by faith is the “hinge upon which religion turns,” the doctrine upon which “the church stands or falls.” In Romans chapter 4, Paul introduces this vital doctrine through a discussion of two major Old Testament characters who believed in it, and in this session, we look with Paul at the blessed reality behind Christian faith and grace.

In Romans 5, Paul talks about the effects of Christian justification–about the peace, hope, and joy that arise in response to being made right with God. In this session, we explore what it means for justification to change the life of an individual and how that experience is reflected in the example of an 18th-century woman named Abigail Hutchinson.

“You’re gonna have to serve somebody,” Bob Dylan sang in 1979, and the apostle Paul wrote something very similar two millennia ago. In Romans 6, Paul writes that those who have been joined to Christ through faith have already been freed from one master and made servant to another. Our only choice is to live accordingly.

New Testament scholar Dale Bruner calls Romans 7 the single most difficult chapter to interpret in the book of Romans. The claims Paul makes seem puzzling. Why does he suggest that he is still held captive by sin and unable to resist its influence? In this session, we explore what Paul truly means.

In Romans 8, Paul describes the new life which those who have died and been raised with Christ now inhabit, a life lived no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit. What is this new life? Does our idea of it match our experience? In this session, we explore the three virtues of this life: faith, hope, and love.

Paul’s discussion of God’s sovereign election of his people in Romans 9 has generated numerous and heated debates over the course of Christian history, yet we have often lost sight of why Paul addresses this topic in the first place. For what is at stake here is nothing less than the security of God’s love.