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Romans 1 Aka a Walk down Roman's Road ~ Bible Study
This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus chosen by
God to be an apostle and sent out to preach His Good News. God promised this
Good News long ago through His prophets in the holy Scriptures. The Good News
is about His Son. In His earthly life he was born of God when He was raised from the dead by the
power of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus Christ our Lord. Through Christ, God has
given us the privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere
what God has done for the, so that they will believe and obey Him, bringing
glory to His name.
Romans 1:1-5
Define or explain the following.
Apostle
Good News
Gentiles
And you are included among those Gentiles who have been
called to belong to Jesus Christ. I am writing to all of you in Rome who are
loved by God and are called to be his own holy people. May God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Verses 6-7
God planned to have Jesus born from David's family line from
the beginning. If you have read the Old Testament you know that David was a
king and a man after ‘God's own heart'. Yet even he had some moments that
pulled him away from the direction God was moving him. When David sinned God had
him suffer the consequences for that sin. We now have more of a chance to not
have to suffer consequences because Jesus came to die for us and took on the
consequences for our sins. Once we move forward in our walk with God we loose
the desire to walk a sinful life because we renew our minds in the Word and
Prayer daily.
The more we read the more we will want to read! Let's go!
Romans 1:7-13 NLT — I am writing to all of you in Rome who
are loved by God and are called to be his own holy people.
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace
and peace. Let me say first that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of
you, because your faith in him is being talked about all over the world. God
knows how often I pray for you. Day and night I bring you and your needs in
prayer to God, whom I serve with all my heart by spreading the Good News about
his Son. One of the things I always pray for is the opportunity, God willing,
to come at last to see you. For I long to visit you so I can bring you some
spiritual gift that will help you grow strong in the Lord. When we get
together, I want to encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be
encouraged by yours. I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, that I
planned many times to visit you, but I was prevented until now. I want to work
among you and see spiritual fruit, just as I have seen among other Gentiles.
Romans 1:7-13
In Verses 8 and 9 Paul tells the Romans that he was proud of
them for sharing the Gospel, that people were talking about how they were
living for Christ and he said they were being talked about all over the world, but
here is my Is question, how big was the world in those days? In AD 57? (Leave the answer here or in the Comments at
If someone was talking about you and your faith in Jesus,
would they have good things to say like this? It made Paul eager to visit them,
because sometimes we can hear a good report but to see them in action is
a totally different thing!
Would your life make someone eager to see your fruits?
For I have a great sense of obligation to people in both the civilized world and the rest of the world, to the educated and uneducated alike. So, I am eager to come to you in Rome, too, to preach the Good News. For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
But God
shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the
truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it
obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the
earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible
qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not
knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even
give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.
As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they
instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living
God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals
and reptiles. So, God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their
hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each
other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So, they worshiped
and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy
of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful
desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead
indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual
relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things
with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves
the penalty they deserved. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he
abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should
never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed,
hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They
are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new
ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand,
break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice
requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them
anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. Romans 1:14-32
The purpose of Romans chapter 1?
Get your act together!
Be sure that you your self are walking with the Lord in
obedience to what God says to do in His Word.
Obey God
Do what the Word says
Pray – in agreement with the Word, not just according to
your personal desires but as the Word instructs us to pray. For others, for
ourselves, for salvation, for direction etc.
Create in me a clean heart O’ God and renew a right spirit
within me!
This should be our daily motto, clean heart and clean mind
of things we should not think about.
Paul wanted to be sure that the Romans, and also we were
following the truth, and that they were
obeying it. The scriptures above tell us of things the Romans were up to in
that time, as in other times in history, man continues to fail God, but He
never fails them.
Not really. The Word of God is full of stories, true
stories, of men and women failing to follow God’s commands. Paul wanted to be
sure the Romans, both Jew and Gentile were following the commands, and also
trusting Jesus to be who He said He is. He wanted them to love one another,
even separate ends of the spectrum here. Remember the Jewish believers were
coming from the OT way of thinking. They had offered offerings an obeyed the
law, (or didn’t) for generation to generation as they failed and returned to
follow God’s law. Then there were the Gentiles who were equal in the fact they
were now believers just like the Jews. They followed Jesus straight away and
had to learn what the law stuff was all about still. We today fall into that
category for the most part.
In the beginning of this chapter Paul discusses his plans to
travel to see them all and help them to come together as one body of Christ.
As you read in Chapter 1 you will see that Paul addresses
the sinners, the sin, and the believers and tries to encourage them to see one
another as brothers and sisters, and to help them to clean their minds, and
hearts and lives up. He tries to tell them that he had heard of some of them
doing good, getting rid of the old man and creating that newness in Christ by
believing and being obedient to His Words . So, as they gathered together He
wanted to remind them not to fall back to the foolish things they did that God
just gave them over to as they refused
to obey Him. This is where it gets hard for many people to accept the walking
it out!
In verses 16 the Word gets real, but go forward where it
tells them how God knew thing things they were doing that were vial. Continue
on and read about how the people were foolish and made up their own ideas of
what God was like. We know these as myths. But the people were doing what they
thought was right, in their own eyes not God’s.
Even the evil, or vial, or just plain wrong things that were being done
God was willing to forgive them. So, they got rid of that, and went forward to
obey the Word of God. They began
sharing, but that will come in another chapter. At this point we have a few
questions. The book of Romans was written around A.D. 56-58. It would have
been most likely when Paul was in Corinth and during his 3rd missionary
journey. Some state it was in the early Spring around AD 57.
The timing places the writing before Nero began persecuting
the Christians in Rome. Also it seems it was written after the collection of
funds from the church in Macedonia, and Achachaia to take to Jerusalem.
After reading the first chapter you will see that the people
he is writing to have been living a sinful life and needed God in their lives,
Paul points out humanities need for righteousness in chapters 1-3. In Chapters
4-5he points out the provision of righteousness that God provides. Then as we
walk through the rest of the chapters we will find the Power, the plan, and the
practical outworking of righteousness.
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What did God promise that would save the people
from their sins? Other than the sacrifices the Jews had to provide for
generations. See vs.1-3
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What is the Good News?
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What does Paul thank God for?
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How often did Paul pray for the people according
to Verses 8-9
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Paul felt an obligation to teach the Gospel to
both educated and uneducated alike, this is why he continued to write and visit
to instruct the people in righteousness; what was the first thing he taught
them? Vs 16-17
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Throughout history God took care of those
who sinned against Him for a while then just left them to their own devices
evidenced in their suffering battles in life. Many died, many were captured,
through out the Old Testament we can read about the many generations who both
obeyed then disobeyed God. Paul wanted to change this in his teaching. God
wanted to change this in our lives!
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How did
God make it evident that He existed? Or how would you know if you had not read
the Bible?
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What did the people do instead of worshiping God?
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Why did He abandon them to their own devices?
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Sin is disobeying God. Doing something He said
not to do, and ignoring His direction. In God’s eyes is one sin worse than the
others?
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What did God do to create a way to get rid of
sin in our personal lives?
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How do you get your heart right with God, if you
are walking in sin?
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Personal reflection:
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Do Christians sin? What should we do if we do?
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If someone is in sin, what can we do for them?
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Bonus
Question: Was the book of Romans primarily written in Greek? If so why?
(Barnes’ commentary in the Hub Bible)
As we study through the book of Romans, our groups will vary,
but you can know that I am going to be walking through the Word with you.
Beginning with Romans chapter 1. According to my plan, this would be a daily
read and then discussion questions as we get together. The idea is to grow as
we map out the Roman’s Road diagram to Salvation. The whole book is design to
set us up to share who God is, why Jesus died, and how to gain His guidance in
our lives so that we may clearly share the Gospel. It’s not an ordinary Bible
Study but it will become as deep as you desire to study.
Each day as we read our chapter I will post a video to
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the videos are up. It wont be anything fancy, but straight talk of the Word and
the guidance as God directs in His Word. I will summarize the chapter and point
out the things I found important to my walk with the Lord in hopes that you
will share in the Comments what stood out to you to apply to your life.
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The Study notes and questions will be posted bi-weekly
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