The book of Romans is about the doctrine of justification, how it relates to understanding our relationship to God and how it impacts our living in the world. The key passage can be identified as:

For I am 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; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” (Rom 1:16–17)

At the center of the doctrinal vortex is our relationship to God, which is based on grace and comes to us through faith. Being right with our Creator has always been and always will be inextricably linked to faith. The reason is that we are sinners, and have been since the beginning when Adam and Eve sinned against God, believing the lies of the serpent rather than the words of God. Ever since then, humankind’s efforts to regain the relationship with God that they lost has been hamstrung with our own pride and selfishness. Paul demonstrates this in the early chapters by showing that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). Certainly this pertains to the “down and outers,” the rank sinners who obviously reject the righteousness of God (Rom 1:18-32), but also to the moralist (Rom 2:1-16) and the religious Jew (Rom 2:17-3:20). We all need justification because we are all proven to be unrighteous before God.

Paul goes on to explain what justification is. In Christ’s death on the cross, God demonstrated “… His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). He declares the unjust to be justified, and that involves His grace (in that we don’t deserve it) and our faith (in that we take Him at His word). Paul expands on this for two chapters (Rom 3:21-5:21) describing the richness of this justification. From chapters 6:1-8:39, we discover how this affects us, culminating in the great anchor statement of our faith:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38–39)

If this message is so fantastic, why then did Israel reject it (the subject of Rom 9:1-11:36)? And finally, chapters 12-15 give a picture of how we should then live in light of our justification. Paul concludes with his personal greetings.

Lord, thank You for the wonderful truth of the doctrine of justification.