David M Pearce
The city of Rome was the beating heart of the Empire. By the middle of the First Century, it probably had half a million citizens. As always happens, Jews were attracted to the capital, where they could buy and sell and lend money. So, it is not surprising to find that the 'ecclesia' there (to use the New Testament term for a group of believers) included both Jewish and Greek followers of Christ. But how had they come to hear the gospel? Up to this time the Apostle Paul had ventured no further west than Greece in his missionary journeys. We know that there were Jews from Rome in Jerusalem when the Apostle Peter preached the good news about Jesus there, a few weeks after the resurrection (see Acts 2:5 and Acts 2:8–10). Many of them were baptised into the new faith (Acts 2:41). So, it is possible some of them afterwards took the gospel home to Rome. But it is surprising to find that when Paul finishes off his letter in chapter sixteen, although he himself has never visited Rome, he sends greetings to a least twenty–five named believers there. This suggests that many people he had converted in Greece and Asia had afterwards moved to Rome. We know for sure that two of them, Priscilla and Aquila, moved several times around the empire. Acts 18:2, Acts 18:24 & 26, Acts 16:3.
But why did the Apostle take time to write a long letter of sixteen chapters to an ecclesia hundreds of miles from Corinth where he was staying? The answer comes in Romans Romans 1:10 and Romans 15:23–28. Paul proposes to spend time with the Roman believers on his way to preach the gospel in Spain. We will find that the main drift of the Apostle's message is directed to the Jewish members of the community, who were finding it hard to relinquish their pride in the Law of Moses and God's choice of them as his special nation. He hopes that his closely reasoned arguments to prove we are saved by God's grace, and not by our descent from Abraham or our keeping the Law, will prepare them for his arrival.
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Copyright © 2015 by David M Pearce
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