My Personal Study of the Book of Romans
April 15, 2014, Tuesday, 210 p.m.
I want to study the Book of Romans in a deeper way than I ever have and want to absorb it, think on it, pray on it, ponder it, and thank God for it and in a way I have never done before with any Bible study. Also, this initial study is my personal study.
I will then use this material in three different ways:
1 A Year of Always Giving Thanks, my personal study as I go.
2 I will divide #1 into my personal and separate study book, where I do more of a study than #1 and add more material.
3 I will then rewrite #2 into a study book for others. This will be another book and blog series. I will add more Bible study material.
The Book of Romans is an epistle. An epistle is a letter, by the way. Paul wrote this letter to the Roman Church. It was written for Gentiles.
A servant is someone who is owned as property. Hence, their life is not their own. They belong to the observant.
What Paul said in Romans 1:1 was he was a servant of Jesus Christ. He didn't belong to anyone else. His life belonged to Jesus alone. This is what Paul chose.
April 16, 2014, Wednesday, 818 a.m.
Romans 1:1-4 shows how Paul is showing his qualifications, along with the qualifications (and fulfilled prophecy) about Jesus Christ the Messiah. These verses also define the Gospel or the Good News. The most important thing to note is that Paul established how Jesus Christ fulfilled prophecy and is the Messiah. We will look at some cross-references to help underscore this.
Romans 1:5-6 shows what Paul and the Church of Rome has and what they should do.
Look at this link:
The cross-references of Romans 1:2 are: Matthew 1:22; Luke 1:70; Acts 13:32; Romans 3:21; Romans 16:26; Galatians 3:8; Titus 1:2.
What prophecies did Jesus Christ fulfill? Here’s a very small sampling: Genesis 3:15 (see Luke 1:35; Matthew 1:18-20; Hebrews 2:14; Galatians 4:4-5; and 1 John 3:8); Genesis 5:24 (See Mark 6:19); Genesis 9:26-27 (See Luke 3:36); 2 Samuel 7:12 (See Matthew 1:1); Psalm 22:22 (See John 20:17); Psalm 109:4 (See Luke 23:34); Isaiah 7:14 (See Luke 1:35; Matthew 1:18-23); Isiah 11:1 (See Matthew 2:23; Luke 3:23; Luke 3:32); Isaiah 53:2 (See Luke 2:7; Philippians 2:7-8); etc.
See the items in this list for more prophecies Jesus Christ fulfilled, proving He is the Messiah:
Every now and then, I will try to add additional resources and tools for you to look at and study. After all, there is nothing more important than having as many tools in your toolbox as we can to help us read, study, apply, and thank God about regarding the Bible.
One of the cross-references for romans 1:2 is Romans 3:21. However, let’s look at 3:21-24. We will look more at this passage later, but it’s important for us to note now as well.
21 But God has a way to make people right with him without the law, and he has now shown us that way which the law and the prophets told us about. 22 God makes people right with himself through their faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for all who believe in Christ, because all people are the same: 23 Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard, 24 and all need to be made right with God by his grace, which is a free gift. They need to be made free from sin through Jesus Christ.
-- NCV: Scripture taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I do not know about you, but I would sure say this answers the question as to what the Good News or the Gospel are and helps define them. Moreover, we learn more about the dangers of what we can become slaves to, if Jesus Christ isn’t our master. So, this helps explain Romans 1:1 all the more.
This is what I love about God’s Word, the Holy Bible, the Scripture. Everything goes hand-in-hand. It never comes out empty or void:
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
-- NKJV: Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Word, the Bible, supports itself and proves itself true. Moreover, it works in us. Romans 1:1-4 are supported, in part, by Romans 3:21-24. And, those verses are supported by other verses. Hence, they are cross-references.
My personal Bible study of the book of Romans will be somewhat of a verse by verse Bible study. It easily could be. I could, frankly, spend the next several years studying this Book of Romans. However, I will not. I may take a year, however.
As I mentioned earlier, I will do this study in three stages. This is stage one. Then, I will dive into it further. Then, I will dive into it even further and fuller.
Tells us how Jesus was also human. Hence, he had a family tree.
Now, as a woman who is dealing with, and has dealt with issues of infertility, let me tell you how this stands out even more to me. I cannot help but think of everyone who has been and will be adopted.
God Himself claimed the family line of Joseph and Mary , even though He was not theirs in the egg and sperm connection. Mary carried Him, sure. But, Jesus wasn’t brought into the world through the meeting of the two. He was put into Mary’s belly through the Holy Spirit.
Blood does not matter.
Jesus is still fully theirs from the human stance because they raised Him as theirs.
If blood didn’t matter to God, but the chosen family did, how much more should this matter to us? And, how much less should blood matter? As far as genetics, that is.
Romans 1:3 reminds us Jesus Christ the Messiah, Redeemer, and Savior was flesh. He lived and breathed. He walked this earth. He was here. He lived, died, and was resurrected. This isn’t a myth. It really happened—and we have the historical resources to prove it.
4 who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,
-- NASB: Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
CONTEXT: Romans 1:4 is jammed pack with all sorts of important things for us to stop and notice. The problem is, we need to do precisely that. Sop and notice. Too often, we hurry through reading a verse, we fail to stop and take every word and phrase in fully and digest what they each mean individually, then together in smaller chunks, then as a sentence, then as a paragraph, then as a chapter, then as a book, then as a testament of the Bible. (This is called context. The pieces make the whole and cannot be understood thoroughly without the other.)
Every word, phrase, sentence, verse, paragraph, chapter, page, book, and testament of the Bible are essential and go hand-in-hand. In other words, and for example, we cannot understand one word without the entirety of the Bible.
And, isn’t this what we try to do? We try to not read the entire Bible—all the way through, cover to cover, and we try to assign meaning to things when we do not have the proper context?
Also, we will quote a verse, but not know what the rest of that chapter or book says—and in quoting the verse, we might not understand the context at all. Without proper and full understanding of the context, we CANNOT understand the verse. In fact, it’s impossible to do so.
PROPER CONTEXT: How can we avoid not understanding the proper context of something? This is how: If we are going to quote one verse of the Bible, we should read a minimum of five verses before and after that verse or passage—even if we have to read the previous Book of the Bible or the chapter after our verse or passage. Ideally, we will read all of the chapter before, the one in which we are quoting, reading, or studying, and then the chapter afterward as well. This helps most with understanding the proper context of a verse or passage.
TO DO: 1 Re-read Romans 1:4 at this point so you can remember what we’re talking about here.
2 Then, read Romans 1:1-7.
3 Now, let’s read and study Romans 1:4 in particular.
What do we learn in Romans 1:4?
1 Jesus Christ is powerful.
2 Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
3 He was resurrected from death.
4 He died.
5 It was declared.
6 It was according to the Spirit of Holiness.
(See NASB, HCSB, and EXB—for example.)
I don’t know about you, but all of this needs to sink in a little more—verses 1-4. So, I want to stop and let them.
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Without proper and full understanding of the context, we CANNOT understand the verse.
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MY PET-PEEVE: DROWNING IN BUSYNESS
Here is my pet-peeve, which drives me a little crazy (okay—a lot crazy) about the way we read the bible and study it today. We hurry through it. We are busy. We’re treading water, just trying to survive, as we drown in our world of busyness. So, add Bible reading and bible study, two things we know we should do, but then it feels like it should be a weight and we start to go down because we’re juggling so much.
Will we drown?
No. Because all of us seem to be experts at treading water. We keep ourselves afloat, somehow, but just barely. So, we do this with bible study and bible reading as well. We do just enough to try to keep ourselves afloat. Even those who write the studies are doing the same thing.
We do just enough.
Or, so we think. Is it really?
Is it no wonder we don’t have millions becoming Christians every day in our world? We’ve dumbed it all down through rushing through it. We have to check that off our to do list.
So, that’s why I say the best thing we can all do in our lives is SLOW DOWN do we do not drown. We need to slow down so we can see the blessings all around. We need to slow down so we can absorb what we’ve read, studied, learned, want to apply, have applied, review what we’ve learned, and evaluate how if we have properly applied what we’ve learned—and are living it now.
That’s why I am not in a hurry to get through the Book of Romans. I would rather be in the Word of God, every day, for the rest of my life, and truly absorb it, apply it, review, and evaluate, than read the entirely of the bible and get nothing from it.
I am not in a hurry to check off things.
I would rather enjoy God and His Word, than rush through it so I can try to stay afloat in the busyness of my life. His Word is my anchor, so I don’t get swept away by the current. And, His Word is my life-preserver and keeps me from drowning. Hence, that’s why I will try to give this the first attention in my life, not the last breadcrumbs. I will try not to put His Word on the backburner. I will try to do it first in my life. Then, everything else will follow suit.
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The best thing we can all do in our lives is SLOW DOWN do we do not drown.
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