Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 99 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This lecture works through the letter that has generated more discussion than any book in Scripture. Dr. Essex surveys the vocabulary that carries Romans, righteousness sixty-nine times, law seventy-three, then walks the modern debates: is the purpose theological, missionary, apologetic, or pastoral, and does the body divide at chapter 5 or chapter 6? He closes at Romans 3 with the question that still humbles Gentile readers: what advantage has the Jew? Listen for why a letter so full of theology was not written to teach theology.
Romans has generated more discussion than anything else written in Scripture; even the current scholarly contest over the New Perspective on Paul is, at bottom, a debate about Romans, with Galatians playing a supporting part. The background stands from the previous lecture: Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, writes from Corinth about AD 57 to the believers at Rome, a network of house congregations of Jewish and Gentile Christians, and Schreiner notes some houses may have mixed both, a good and solid church across which a gulf had opened between Jew and Gentile. The themes, unlike the purpose and structure, are largely uncontroversial, and they map the letter's burden.
Paul uses Jew twenty-two times together with Israel, his preferred term in chapters 9 through 11 for the physical seed of Abraham, while Jew carries the religious note, those who bear the name and follow the practice, as chapter 14's observance of days and foods shows some Roman believers still did. Greek and Gentile together appear some thirty-five times, and in 1:14 Paul divides humanity as the Greeks did, Greeks and barbarians, the cultured and the uncultured. From 1:16, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, to the climax at 15:7 to 13, the dichotomy underlies everything, and the resolution is that the foundation of unity is not prior ethnicity or religion but the new relationship to God through Jesus Christ, which is why the letter stresses the work of Christ, the commonality of sin and of righteousness by faith, more than the person of Christ, which it assumes.
The righteousness root occurs sixty-nine times, its weight falling in the first ten chapters and its last appearance at 14:17, the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Chapters 1 through 3 establish the unrighteousness of Gentile and Jew alike; chapters 9 and 10 diagnose Israel's tragedy as the pursuit of a righteousness of their own by works of the law. Wrath appears twelve times and in two tenses: a present revelation, God giving the suppressors of truth over to the full expression of their unrighteousness, and a stored-up wrath awaiting the day of righteous judgment for the stubborn and unrepentant. Salvation in Romans is deliverance from that wrath: having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.
Law appears seventy-three times and in several senses: the whole Old Testament, as in 3:21 where righteousness apart from the law is yet witnessed by the law and the prophets; the commandments and stipulations; and sometimes a bare principle, as in the law of faith. Of the law as commandment Paul says six things. It reveals sin. It incites sin, for the flesh is so bent that the sign forbidding the grass awakens the desire to walk on it. It brings wrath, since disobedience meets God's anger. It was provisional and has been replaced, for we have been released from the law, dying to that by which we were bound. It is nonetheless of divine origin, spiritual and good. And its requirement is now fulfilled in believers who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit: the very godliness the law dictated is produced by the indwelling Spirit apart from the commandments.
Flesh is first used neutrally, Christ born of the seed of David according to the flesh, his sheer humanity; but when it takes ethical color, above all in chapters 7 and 8, it is never positive, for in our humanity lives a propensity to evil. The problem was never the law but the flesh, and sin, named fifty-four times, is what the flesh produces. Over against flesh stands the Spirit, and the believer's victory is life in the Spirit rather than in the flesh. Faith is the God-given instrument of transfer, from wrath to deliverance, from the unrighteous state to the righteous, from death to life: in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, and the righteous shall live by faith.
Paul quotes and alludes to the Old Testament more in Romans than in any of his letters, because his gospel is the one promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy Scriptures; the climactic paragraph of 15:7 to 13 is itself a chain of citations promising Gentile praise. With Matthew, Hebrews, and Revelation, Romans stands among the most Old Testament-anchored books in the canon, and so it demands of its hearers, as of a modern congregation, an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament, one more mark of the maturity of the Roman church. Moo adds the strategic term: gospel, sparse in the body, is planted at the introduction, the conclusion, and the hinges, set apart for the gospel, not ashamed of the gospel, a priest of the gospel aspiring to preach where Christ is not named. The gospel is the foundation of the whole, and Spain is its horizon.
Why did Paul write Romans? Four positions. Theological: the classic Protestant reading from Luther and Calvin, Romans as the summary of Paul's theology, or in Moo's refinement, of his gospel. Missionary: the letter unites the Romans behind the mission to Spain, the first missionary support letter in history, and one that puts modern support letters to shame by its theology. Apologetic: Paul answers slanders, as 3:8 shows, we are slanderously reported as saying, let us do evil that good may come, and defends his unbroken heart for Israel. Pastoral: Paul writes as an instrument of reconciliation between Jewish and Gentile believers, the reading Dr. MacArthur's commentary favors. Against the purely theological view stand hard facts: the letter argues nothing about the person of Christ, develops no ecclesiology, never mentions the ordinances, and Paul says he has written only to remind a church that already knows. Modern interpreters, Schreiner among them, blend the purposes with B or D overarching, and Essex leans the same way: the pastoral appeal of chapters 14 and 15 is the climax of the body, with the missionary hope resuming in the epilogue.
If the purpose is not to teach theology, why eleven chapters of it? Because the theology is the foundation of the appeal. Paul is unknown to most at Rome and must establish his credentials and his gospel before his apostolic appeal can land; and the justification language, which effectively completes its work by chapter 10 and returns once at 14:17, serves the purpose statement Essex offers for the whole letter: Paul communicated to Jewish and Gentile Christians that both were acceptable to God on the basis of a common righteousness received by faith in Christ, and on that basis they should accept one another. This pattern, theological foundation then occasioned appeal, will recur through all of Paul's letters: doctrine is never decoration; it is the ground on which the exhortation stands.
More commentaries exist on Romans than on any book of the Bible; Essex pares the shelf to three. For the Greek text, Cranfield's two-volume ICC, unabridged, all fourteen hundred pages, the exegetical digest of Romans, arguing every position before concluding; his conclusions lean Barthian, conservative neo-orthodox, yet his reverence for Calvin makes them often sound Reformed, and even where he lands wrong the right answer is in his notes. For English interpretation, Moo, who stands on Cranfield's exegesis while defending the Reformation reading of Luther and Calvin. For exposition, MacArthur. Beyond the three: Sanday and Headlam's old ICC, Schreiner's excellent newer work, and Murray's theological riches, with the caution that an author's multiple commentaries on one book largely repeat.
All agree the prologue runs through 1:17 and the epilogue begins at 15:14; the fight is over the body. The classic Reformed outline, reflected in MacArthur, follows the word righteousness: condemnation, 1:18 to 3:20, all under sin; justification, 3:21 through chapter 5, righteousness imputed through faith; sanctification, chapters 6 to 8, righteousness imparted; vindication, chapters 9 to 11, God's righteousness defended in his dealings with Israel; application, 12:1 to 15:13, righteousness practiced, climaxing in mutual acceptance. Cranfield overturned this from Habakkuk 2:4 as quoted in 1:17: not, the righteous shall live by faith, but, the righteous by faith shall live, so that 1:18 to 4:25 presents the one righteous by faith and 5:1 to 8:39 how that one shall live, the assurance and outworking of justification, with Moo following. Chapter 5 is transitional on any reading, culminating justification or founding the life that follows; Hiebert simply labels the blocks doctrinal, dispensational, and practical. By a fine line, Essex still leans to the classic division at chapter 6.
Romans 3 opens the question the letter's Gentile readers needed most: if Jew and Gentile stand in the same state before God, what advantage has the Jew? Great in every respect, Paul answers: first, they were entrusted with the oracles of God, and Israel's unfaithfulness to those oracles does not nullify God's faithfulness to them; God remains righteous both in judging sin and in keeping his word. The list resumes in chapter 9: the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, the promises, the fathers. The advantage is not an advantage for justification, but chapters 9 through 11 show its reality: a believing remnant in every generation now, and the salvation of all Israel to come, God's past, present, and future dealings all of one piece.
The occasion sharpens the doctrine: the arrogant Gentiles of chapter 11 had concluded God was through with Israel, and Paul writes to say the opposite. Gentile believers participate in a salvation God prepared first for Israel; Isaiah's word stands behind Romans, it is too small a thing to restore Israel only, I will make you a light to the nations. Essex presses the humility this produces: the Gentile is grafted into Israel's promises, saved by Israel's Messiah, and even now his salvation is God's instrument to provoke Israel to jealousy. He adds the seminary memory of Charles Feinberg, the Jewish believer of whom it was said that at conversion he was already largely sanctified, knowing God's word as Gentiles labor to learn it, and his own homely picture: the Gentile feasts gladly on what he calls the leftovers of Israel's table, and finds them better than anything the Gentiles could have set out themselves. Seeing this guards the church from the very arrogance that divided Rome.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all eighteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does Essex say about the volume of discussion Romans has generated?
2. What is the foundation of unity between Jew and Greek in Romans?
3. In what two tenses does Romans speak of wrath?
4. What does salvation mean in the argument of Romans?
5. What does the do-not-walk-on-the-grass illustration teach about the law?
6. How is the law's requirement fulfilled in believers?
7. What was the real problem the law exposed?
8. Why does Romans quote the Old Testament more than any other Pauline letter?
9. Where does Moo find the term gospel strategically placed?
10. What facts tell against the purely theological purpose of Romans?
11. Where does Essex land on the purpose of Romans?
12. Why does a letter not written to teach theology contain eleven chapters of it?
13. What is Essex's counsel about buying Cranfield?
14. What did Cranfield's reading of Habakkuk 2:4 change?
15. What role does chapter 5 play in the structure debate?
16. What is the first advantage of the Jew named in Romans 3?
17. What is the advantage of the Jew not an advantage for?
18. How does Romans cure Gentile arrogance?
All eighteen correct. Lecture 18 is complete.
Paul lays eleven chapters of theological foundation before making his appeal. What does that pattern say about churches that want application without doctrine, or doctrine without application?
The law incites the very sin it forbids, yet the Spirit fulfills the law's requirement in believers. How does that distinction change the way a Christian pursues obedience?
Essex says the Gentile believer feasts on the leftovers of Israel's table and finds them better than anything the Gentiles could set out. How does remembering that salvation was prepared first for Israel produce the humility Romans 11 demands?
Paul declared that he was not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. (A paraphrase of Romans 1:16-17)
Dr. Essex names the essential Romans shelf: C. E. B. Cranfield's unabridged two-volume ICC for the Greek text, Douglas Moo for English interpretation, and John MacArthur for exposition, with Thomas Schreiner and John Murray as worthy companions.