From me to you Part 1: Context is everything

The Book of Romans is a beautifully written and well reasoned explanation of Christianity and as such, is a useful resource to inform and encourage us in our faith today.

However, we should never forget that what we know as the Book of Romans is actually a letter, written from an individual to a group of other individuals in a particular place at a particular time. It needs to be read as a whole with an understanding of the context in which it was written for it to speak truth to us today. It was never meant to be dipped in and out of, taking verses here or there out of context and building a meaning around them that was never intended. There’s a verse in Romans that I was taught as a child that shaped my upbringing in the Christian faith and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I discovered there was a second half to the sentence that changed everything! I’ll let you know when we get to it!

And so this month as we travel through this letter, we will consider the context in which it was written and then each day, I intend to write an extract of a letter on the same theme addressed to us in our context today. Quite an undertaking, I know! We’ll have to see how it goes.

Let’s start with the who and why and where and when of this letter to the Romans.

According to Bible scholars, Paul wrote this letter to the Romans some time after 54 AD whilst he was based in Corinth. We’ve just read the Book of Acts detailing Paul’s journeys as he travels near and far telling everyone he can about how Jesus has changed his world.

After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Acts 18:1-2

He has it in his heart to visit Rome and does so in 62 AD, but not as he intended. He arrives as a prisoner to appeal to Caesar and the Book of Acts finishes with him still under house arrest in Rome. At the time of writing however, he does not know for sure when he will get to see the believers in Rome face to face and so he writes them this letter.

Rome sat at the heart of the Roman Empire and as such, was regarded as the centre of the known world. At that time, Rome’s total population was around 1 million people. This made the city one of the largest Mediterranean cities of the ancient world, along with Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch in Syria, and Corinth in Greece. During the early days of Christianity, the Roman Empire was the dominant political and military force , with the city of Rome as its foundation. By 60 AD, the Romans had made it as far as Britain and this was the time of Boudicca’s rebellion in Britain.

Rome was the political hub of the Roman Empire: the Roman Emperors lived in Rome, along with the Senate, rather like modern-day Washington D.C. Rome was a wealthy city with a strong class system including slaves, free individuals, official Roman citizens, and political and military nobles.

Nero was Emperor of Rome at the time and his rule is usually associated with tyranny and extravagance. First-century Rome was known to be filled with all kinds of decadence and immorality, from the brutal practices of the arena to sexual immorality of all kinds.

When it came to religion during the first century, Rome was heavily influenced by Greek mythology and the practice of Emperor worship. Most inhabitants of Rome were polytheistic meaning that they worshipped several different gods and demigods. Most forms of worship were tolerated. Rome contained many temples, shrines, and places of worship but without any centralised ritual or practice.

The Roman authorities didn’t mind who you worshipped as long as you included the emperor. This created conflict with both Christians and Jews during the middle of the first century, because both Christians and Jews were fiercely monotheistic. They believed in only one God. They refused to worship the emperor. And so they were persecuted. The Roman Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from the city of Rome in 49 AD and this exile lasted until Claudius’ death five years later.  Emperor Nero harboured an intense dislike for Christians and as his rule continued, he enjoyed persecuting Christians for his own pleasure.

So how did the Christian church in Rome come about in the first place?

The earliest Christian believers in Rome were of Jewish origin. There were as many as 50,000 Jews living in Rome during Paul’s day. Some of these believers would have been Jewish disciples of Jesus, who had settled in Rome and shared the life and teaching and death and resurrection of Jesus with their families and friends. Others would have been Jewish inhabitants of Rome who were exposed to Christianity while visiting Jerusalem, maybe even during that first Day of Pentecost when the church was first established. These disciples held gatherings in their own homes across the city.

As the word of this Jesus spread too amongst the Gentiles (non Jews), more and more turned to this new life in Jesus. When Claudius expelled all Jews from the city of Rome, it was only the Gentile Christians who remained. During that exile of the Jews, the church in Rome grew and expanded as a predominantly Gentile community of believers. When the Jews were allowed back to Rome, the returning Jewish Christians came home to find a church that was very different to the one they had left behind. This resulted in clashes between Christians of Jewish origin and Christians who were Gentiles about how to do things.

It is into this context that Paul writes his letter to the believers in Rome. His letter includes instructions for Jewish and Gentile Christians about how to live in harmony and properly worship God as a new culture, a new church. This makes for exciting and challenging reading for us today, as we work out how the church of God should look and behave in our context in the modern world.

For the Roman believers, it’s time to stop judging each other, put aside differences and learn to live in unity.

We also have much to learn in that respect.

So join me as we study this letter to the Romans this month. Each day, we will consider the context, read an extract from the letter and then I will write a letter on the same theme from me to you.

Are you ready for this? Then let’s get started!