Romans 1 (a translation by Francois du Toit)

ROMANS 

Chapter1

1:1 Paul, passionately engaged by Jesus Christ, identified in Him to represent Him. My exclusive (marked out) message is to announce the news of the goodness of God to mankind.

1:2 This news is what the scriptures are all about. It remains the central prophetic theme and content of inspired writing.

1:3 The son of God has his natural lineage from the seed of David,

1:4 however, His powerful resurrection from the dead by the Holy Spirit, locates and confirms His beginning in God.

1:5 The grace and apostleship we received from Him, is to bring about the obedience of faith in all the nations. All the nations are identified in His name.

1:6 Jesus Christ gives definition to your design!

1:7 I am addressing this writing to you Romans, convinced of God’s love for you, He identified you in His son, as being separated unto Him. His grace gift in Christ secures your total wellbeing. The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is ours also, He is our God.

1:8 My greatest joy is to realise that your faith is announced throughout the entire world. The total cosmos is our audience!

1:9 My spiritual worship is occupied with this one theme, the declaring of the goodness of God revealed in sonship, this inspires my prayers for you. God has every one of them on record!

1:10 I am already knitted to you in my prayers and how I long to also see you face to face!

1:11 I yearn to see you, knowing that my spiritual gift to you will benefit you greatly; it will cement and establish you.

1:12 And so we will be mutually encouraged in the reflection of our common faith.

1:13 Until now I have been prevented from coming to you, even though I have frequently desired to reap some harvest in you as much as I anticipate the full fruit of this gospel in all the nations.

1:14 I am so convinced of everyone’s inclusion; I am indebted both to the Greeks as well as those many foreigners whose languages we do not even understand. I owe this message to everyone, it is not a matter of how literate and educated people are, the illiterate are equally included in the benefit of the good news.

1:15 Because of this compelling urgency I am so keen to preach to you Romans also!

1:16 That is why I am not at all modest about the good news of Christ, I make no apologies! The powerful rescuing act of God becomes evident in everyone who believes. This salvation which was first declared to the Jews is now extended to the Greeks on equal terms.

1:17 The secret is out, God did it right in Christ; He is convinced about mankind and now persuades us to believe what He knows to be true about us. The prophets wrote in advance about this life of righteousness which would be based on faith and not on personal performance.

1:18 (The law) revealed God’s wrath from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness because mankind foolishly suppressed and concealed the truth in their unrighteousness,

1:19 even though God is not a stranger to them, for what can be known of God is already manifest in them. He is in their face.

1:20 God is on display in creation; the very fabric of visible cosmos appeals to reason. It clearly bears witness to the ever present sustaining power and intelligence of the invisible God, leaving man without any valid excuse to ignore Him.

1:21 Yet man only knew Him in a philosophical religious way, from a distance as it were, and failed to give Him credit as God. Their taking Him for granted and lack of gratitude veiled Him from them; they became absorbed in useless debates and discussions which further darkened their understanding about themselves.

1:22 Their wise conclusions only proved folly.

1:23 Loosing sight of God, made them loose sight of who they really were. In their calculation the true image and likeness of God became reduced to a corrupted and distorted pattern of themselves. Suddenly man has more in common with the creepy crawlies than with his original blue-print!

(The Message Translation)1:24 So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out.

1:25 And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them-the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

1:26 Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either-women didn’t know how to be women, men

didn’t know how to be men.

1:27 Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men-all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it-emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

1:28 Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose.

1:29 And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous,

1:30 fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way.

1:31 Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded.

1:32 And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care-worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

NOTES:

v1 apostelo, an extension from Him, a representative

doulos, slave from deo, to be bound or knitted together like a husband and wife

kletos from kaleo, called, to identify by name, also the 2nd part of the word ecclesia, Math.16:17,18

eu + angellion good news, the official announcement of God’s goodness.

v 2 Math 22:41-45 and 23:9

v 4 apo + horizo, to mark out beforehand, to define or locate, lit. horizon, same word translated exclusive in v 1. Also in his preaching in Acts 13:32,33, Paul links the resurrection to Ps 2, …Today I have begotten you…He has come to locate us and confirm that we have our genesis in God!

v 5 obedience lit. accurate hearing. Every family in heaven and on earth, Eph 3:15. Note that Paul immediately sets out to give new definition to obedience, no longer by law, but of faith.

v 7 Gal.1:15,16 He separated me from my mother’s womb when He revealed His son in me, in order that I may declare Him in the nations

v  10 beseech, deomai, from deo to tie together, to be knitted together

v  11 metadidomi the kind of giving where the giver is not distanced from the gift but wrapped up in it!

The apostles, prophets, preachers, pastors and teachers are gifts to the believers to establish them in their faith and to present them in the full and mature stature of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-16. There is such a vast difference between a gift and a reward! We are God’s gifts to one another. What we are in our individual expression is a gift and not a reward for personal diligence or achievement. These gifts were never meant to establish one above the other, or to become mere formal titles, but rather to identify specific and dynamic functions with one defined purpose, to bring everyone into the realisation of the fullness of the measure of Christ in them!

v 14 to be indebted, to have to return something to someone that belongs to them in the first place.

v 17 In it (this gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed, from faith to faith. He is the Author and finisher of our faith. Heb.12:1.

The gospel is the revelation of the righteousness of God; it declares how God got it right to put mankind right with Him. The word righteousness comes from the Anglo Saxon word, rightwiseness, wise in that which is right. In Greek the root word for righteousness, is the word dike, which means two parties finding likeness in each other. The Hebrew word for righteousness is the word tzadok, which refers to the beam in a scale of balances. If God is the standard measure, then that which reflects His likeness and image alone will balance the scale.

Habakkuk 2:4…”the just shall live by faith.” The Hebrew word for faith means a total dependence like a child upon the breast of his mother.

v 18 The law reveals how guilty and sinful man is, while the gospel reveals how forgiven and restored to his original blueprint man is.

Summary notes

Understanding the wrath and judgement of God in context:

From chapter1:18 to 3:20 Paul proceeds to give a graphic display of distorted human behaviour. Being a Jew, and therefore to know the law, offers no real advantage since it offers no disguise from sin. It is the same ugliness and deserves the same judgement.

His triumphant statement in v 16,17 of chapter1 and again reinforced in chapter 3:21-24, is set against this backdrop. The good news declares the power of God to rescue man from the ‘guttermost’ to the uttermost.

He brings the argument of the ineffectiveness of the law to get man to change his behaviour, to a final crescendo in Chapter 7. He states in 7 verse 1 that he is writing to those who know the law. They have first hand experience therefore of the weakness of the rule to consistently govern the conduct of man.

The best that the law could offer was to educate and confirm good intention; but the more powerful law, the law of sin introduced to universal mankind through one man’s transgression, has to be challenged by a greater force than human willpower.

Because sin robbed man of his true identity and awakened in him all kinds of worse-than-animal-like conduct, a set of rules couldn’t do it. The revelation of God’s righteousness has to be far more effective and powerful than the revelation of man’s guilt.

Paul’s argument is that it is evident that because of man’s corrupt behaviour, mankind deserves nothing less than God’s wrath and condemnation. Yet within this context the grace and mercy of God is revealed, not as mere tolerance from God’s side to turn a blind eye and to put up with sin, but as God’s triumphant act in Christ to break sin’s spell and dominion over man.

For salvation to be relevant it has to offer mankind a basis and reference for his faith to launch from. It has to offer a conclusion of greater implication than the stalemate condition man finds himself in under the dispensation of the law.

“Even though my inner man agrees that the law is good and desires to obey its requirements, my best intentions leave me powerless against the demands of sin in my body! Oh, wretched man that I am!”

Woe be unto us, but for the revelation of God’s righteous intervention! The wrath and judgement man rightfully deserved fell on Christ; He was made to be sin who knew no sin. “He was handed over because of our transgressions, and triumphantly raised because of our acquittal.” (4:25)

For his act of obedience and sacrifice to carry more weight and significance than the act of Adam’s disobedience and sin He has to qualify, like Adam to represent the same mass of humanity that stood condemned. Also, His act on mankind’s behalf must be recognised in the highest courts of universal justice, superior to any contradiction or condemnation. His judgement and death has to fully represent man for it to be of any relevance to man’s faith. If He didn’t die our death we would be presumptuous to reckon that we also co-died with Him.