#2. Romans 1:1-3 - What?

Part I: Introductions

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, a called apostle, severed for the evangel of God (which He promises before through His prophets in the holy scriptures)…

Romans 1:1-7 must be shared before we move forward – this is not because the verses are “usually” cited in your day-to-day church (much of Romans, honestly, is evaded and/or contextually butchered by Christendom, as we will come to find,) but because these verses (unlike the church) proclaim exactly what the letter’s contents will unfold.

The letter, after introducing Paul, shifts to the topic at hand, here. The topic is the “evangel of God.” Paul begins a parenthetical statement giving us the first thing that we need to know about this evangel that we are about to read: that God promises the evangel before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

Paul points out that he wasn’t called out of the blue; he is a part of a bigger picture promised beforehand by other prophets. Paul is going to reference what we now call the “Old Testament” 84 times in all of his letters, and these will thoroughly prove this statement. Each and every time, I’d like you to remember verse two of Romans.

God promised that He would share this “good news” through the prophets in the Old Testament. Are there any examples of this promise made? Yes, absolutely! Jesus Himself (Who was a prophet – Acts 3:22) made promises concerning the good news which is about to be unfolded (Acts 1:5, later in Romans 6.) Other promises are made concerning the evangel by other prophets, such as Habbakuk (Hab. 2:4 – which we will cover shortly.)

The fact that it is a promise should clarify for us that God explicitly did not previously tell Israel this good news that Paul is about to share. Sure enough, you will not find many of Paul’s teachings in the Old Testament (or even in other parts of the New Testament.) You will find reference to them, but not an elaboration on them.

Spoiler alert: the “good news” itself will concern us with God’s righteousness (Rom. 1:17, 3:21-23.) Indeed, “righteousness” is the character trait of God that Paul will be unfolding here. Sure enough, the Old Testament spends ample amount of time stating that God is “just.” Notice, however, that the Scriptures haven’t gone into much detail explaining how God is just?

Tell me if you’ve ever had this situation before: when sharing the evangel with any of my atheist pals, we run into a rough roadblock early – they see what God says concerning Himself. They can read the verses that praise His holiness, His righteousness, His love, all of it. But to them, they’re just “words.” They want proof of the matter, and the statement that “Jesus died for your sins” just doesn’t cut it. They don’t know how Jesus died for your sins (I mean, on a cross, sure, but… how? How does One die for your sins?) They don’t know why Jesus died for your sins (especially if the first five books of the Old Testament, being the Torah, or “Mosaic law,” spends so much time ordering you to be righteous, and man clearly fails so badly at fulfilling it!) Heck, many people, Christian or otherwise, don’t even know what sin actually is!

These simple, pressing questions are unanswerable by many, these days. Oft-times, someone will “make up” an answer in order to fit their personal worldview, and seek Scripture afterwards to try and prove their point, with disregard to context or purpose. This was the case with myself, when I was a Christian, speaking with my atheist buddies. They would squint and say, “Well, Stephen, to you the answer is ‘you just have to believe,’ but I need a little bit more info before I just blindly trust some unknown source. How do I even know the Bible is true? And you just want me to blindly accept it, and then what? Go to your church every Sunday? Why should I keep praying to have my sins forgiven if Jesus already died for them? If God is ‘so loving,’ then why would He throw all my friends in hell? So what if that one guy is gay…? Didn’t God make that person? Yeah, and I know, ‘free will’ is your reply, but… isn’t God, like, ‘God?’ Doesn’t He already know everything? And if so, why would He be punishing these people from getting into heaven after quite literally putting them at a disadvantage? I just don’t know, man. All these issues are why I don’t even get into this stuff. I’m happy, playing the new Zelda or Assassin’s Creed, I enjoy the Marvel movies, I like my friends and family, even if they ‘have flaws,’ and I don’t need some sugar-daddy in the sky telling me what I ‘have to do, or else.’”

…Okay, I may have paraphrased that a bit, but you get the point.

Here’s the good news (for any atheist pal I share this with): this letter will answer each and every one of those questions. It’s detailed, yes. And there’s a lot of information that goes into it. But it is engaging, and I hope to make it entertaining, even if you’re just looking into it because you enjoy my silly prose sometimes. Whether you are a ‘believer’ or not, you will get quite a bit of enjoyment out of this study, from an educational perspective. We will be performing a deep dive into philosophy, psychology, science, and more, to put this letter to the test. This letter will also be correcting pop culture’s lies about God, as we will come to find, and you will find that this letter is actually a perfectly structured argument against irrational religious dogma.

The first step God will take is in proving His righteousness. We see God accounting Abraham’s faith for righteousness, in Gen. 15:6. Why does this God have that Authority? The only way you have the authority to account “righteousness” on someone is if you have a complete grasp as to what that “righteousness” is. If God does not prove His righteousness, then Abraham’s account here is built on a lie.

That’s why Romans is here – we have a complete breakdown on God’s righteous character and heart. All of those “unexplainable” nuances are given their complete answer here. The “promises” God made were in reference to the true doctrine we are about to learn.

This was promised in the holy Scriptures. This begs the question… what makes the Scriptures “holy?”

The term “holy” does not carry a moral quality, as it does today. Each time it is used in the text, it represents being set apart for something. To prove this, I conducted a word study on the term “holy” in the article “Romans 6:12 – Holy Sh…” The Scriptures are holy because they are set apart to God – He takes credit for them all over the place.

Whenever we hear Paul reference the “evangel of God,” in any of his letters, we must understand that he is referencing the doctrine laid out in Romans. This evangel was promised beforehand – thousands of years before Paul even existed (Eph. 1:4.) This presents us with another issue for the folk that believe Paul’s message is “similar,” or “the same as” the other prophets, as the other prophets promise Paul’s message, while Paul presents that promised message. If Paul’s new message only points backwards, back to the same Old Testament teachings, then Paul cannot say he is ‘severed’ for anything new, and the Bible reveals itself a lie – founded on circular reasoning. He references the Old Testament as proof text that his message is legitimate, but it’s not proof that he’s teaching something that’s been taught already. Otherwise the message presented here would be pointless. The evangel of God was promised beforehand, not revealed beforehand.

…evangel of God, Concerning His Son…

The evangel of God concerns Christ. The word “concerning” in the Greek reads, literally, as “ABOUT.” What is the evangel about? God’s Son. The details of this evangel can only be understood through Christ and Him alone. He is the cheat sheet; to subtract any verse speaking of God’s Son would leave Romans in a pitiful, misunderstood, and pathetic state. Thus, in order to apprehend its contents, we should make God’s concern, our concern. If Paul tells us that Romans speaks of the evangel of God, and the evangel of God concerns His Son, then we should accept this.

Note the intimacy of the term – God does not say, “My good news concerns Christ!” The word “Christ” is purposefully not used yet. In order to introduce us to Jesus Christ (which Paul will do in a few verses,) God first begins with the intimate, close term – “My Son.” This shows us, immediately, just how close that we are being brought to our Creator. He will reveal to us His righteousness – choosing His Son as the method and manner by which He will do so.

Every verse that we read concerns Christ, and is an exact effect of His death, entombment, and resurrection. Jesus told the Israelites about God while on earth – yet they were stubborn, and rejected their King. Now here, with Paul, to all the nations, we have God bringing us into His confidence, telling us what His Son truly accomplished.

With the phrase “concerning His Son,” we can grasp the next part of our structure of the first six verses of Romans. To review, we read that the evangel:

1)    Is of God

2)    Was promised before through His prophets in the holy scriptures, and

3)    Concerns us with His Son

So! Paul gets three critical descriptions. Then the evangel gets three different descriptions. Next, we have three more descriptions of “God’s Son,” beginning with another parenthetical.

- GerudoKing