Hope Sabbath School

A journey back in time to first-century Rome.

Did the early Jewish believers have to become Christians in order to accept Jesus? What about the Gentiles—did they need to become Jews? These are the types of questions Paul sought to address in his letter to the Romans.

Early on in the book of Romans, Paul seeks to establish a crucial truth, one central to the gospel—the sad state of the human condition.

We are justified before God, not because of our works but because of Jesus, whose righteousness becomes ours when we accept it "by faith".

By using Abraham—the paragon of holiness and virtue—as an example of a person who needed to be saved by grace without the deeds of the law, Paul was clear. If it had to be by grace with Abraham, it has to be the same with everyone else.

Through the fall of one man, Adam, all humanity faced condemnation, alienation, and death; through the victory of one man, Jesus, all the world was placed on a new footing before God.

If works can’t save us, why bother with them at all? Why not just keep on sinning?

Few chapters in the Bible have created more controversy than has Romans 7. 

Obedience to law had not been, nor ever can be, a means of salvation. This was Paul’s message and Luther’s message, and it must be ours as well.

"As it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated'" (Romans 9:13). What is Paul talking about here? Are we not free to choose or reject God?

The grace of God comes to all—not by nationality, not by birth and not by works of the law but by faith in Jesus, who died as the Substitute for sinners everywhere. 

Salvation by faith? Absolutely. Works, though, are the true expression of what it means to live by faith.

It's the ultimate question: “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). In Romans, we got the answer to that question—and the answer was not what the church was giving at the time of Luther. Hence, the Reformation began, and here we are today.