Romans chapter 1

vs 11

Ummmm... que? Impart spiritual gift? I mean, my first obvious thought is that Paul wants to go and teach them tongues or something. But how exactly does one impart a spiritual gifting? It's not the sort of thing that we expect in my churches. Does Paul feel that the Romans are inadequately spiritually gifted?

vs 12

Ok, so now he thinks that the Roman church may actually have something to offer him back. Mutual encouragement. Perhaps he's thinking they could give him some cash, and he could load them up with some spiritual gifts.

vs 13

Of course Paul would have had Rome on his agenda as a key place to do ministry. Looks like someone else got there first (which is unsurprising really - surely Christians went through Rome as regularly as anyone). Paul may think that he can reap yet more of a harvest among the Romans and add to the church there.

vs 14

Non-Greeks, I assume, includes the Romans, who were actually Roman. Wise and foolish probably include them too. Paul had spent a lot of time in and around Greece, so it might have been that people thought he was "Apostle to the Greeks", but he is saying that God wants him to go further afield than even that.

vs 15

"Preach the gospel" - these last few verses have sounded very evangelistically thrusted, and yet the letter is being written to a church. Is it perhaps that Paul thinks that he can firm up the foundations of the church at Rome, because he isn't sure that they are really firm in a solid understanding of the gospel?

vs 16

I know this is a great and famous verse among the protestant tradition. But does it seem to you to just pop up out of nowhere? Does Paul think the Romans are ashamed of the gospel? Where did shame come into it all of a sudden?

Thinking about the book as a whole, Paul obviously knows something about the Roman church. He addresses some pretty specific issues to them. Perhaps they are ashamed of the gospel, because it involves a crucified God and total grace. Perhaps they are struggling under a burden of false teaching.

Whatever the reason, Paul isn't ashamed. It is interesting to think that it is not Christ, or the Cross, that are the power of God for salvation. It is the gospel - the message of Christ and the Cross. Well, actually the TNIV makes it a little different. It says that the gospel is the power of God that brings salvation. Slight difference, but I think it's important. They TNIV people are suggesting, I think, that while the cross might produce salvation, it is the gospel that brings it to people so that they can believe.

vs 17

Paul is going to build on this idea a whole lot in the next few chapters. The goal is righteousness. The vehicle is faith. I think we often think of the gospel as salvation - that is that it saves us. And it does - vs 16 makes it clear. But the gospel is also what gives us faith, which is what makes us righteous.

The first of many Old Testament quotes here. His liberal use of the OT should tell us that Paul is either writing to a group with a number of Jews in it, or a group that is pretty well grounded in the OT. He mentioned it earlier in the letter too.

vs 18

Ok, this sentence comes out of the blue too.

Well, not completely. I mean, wickedness is pretty much the opposite of righteousness. So Paul is saying that by suppressing the truth about righteousness by being unrighteous, people are just pulling God's wrath down on them from heaven. They don't even need a block and tackle.

vs 19

And God's not just angry because they are doing it in an ignorant way, with nothing to point them to God. God has made himself plain to them, but they still bandy about being wicked.

vs 20

Paul here makes an argument from natural theology - perhaps the strongest one in the NT. The idea that God is creator means therefore that some of God's qualities - namely his power and divinity - are obviously visible through his creation.

This general revelation to all humanity is of course universally recogniseable. But it seems only enough to cause wrath. It doesn't seem that the gospel is apparent in general revelation.