Romans 1 explained: Good News and a World Gone Wrong

Paul's greeting (vv. 1-7)

Paul introduces himself as a servant of Jesus, sent to bring good news promised long ago in the Jewish scriptures to people of every nation, including the believers in Rome. He says Jesus was born into King David's family line and was declared, or in some translations appointed, God's Son with power by rising from the dead.

Longing to visit Rome (vv. 8-15)

Paul has not yet been to Rome, but he thanks God that the believers' faith is talked about far and wide, and he says he has often been kept from coming. He hopes a visit would strengthen both him and them, and he feels he owes his message to everyone, whether of Greek culture or not, educated or not.

The letter's main theme (vv. 16-17)

Paul says he is not ashamed of this message, because it is God's power to rescue everyone who trusts it, Jewish people first and then everyone else. In it God's righteousness is revealed through faith, which he links to the prophet Habakkuk's line that the righteous person lives by faith.

Turning from God (vv. 18-25)

Paul says creation makes God's power plain, yet people pushed that truth down and swapped worship of God for images of humans and animals, and God's anger at this is already showing. His description of that anger is that God handed people over to their own desires, a phrase he repeats in verses 24, 26 and 28, and many readers take it to mean God letting people have what they chose.

Sex and nature (vv. 26-27)

Paul says women traded natural sexual relations for ones contrary to nature (early readers disagreed about what he meant here) and that men turned from women to sex with other men, which he condemns as shameful. Catholic and Orthodox teaching and many Protestants read this as ruling out all same-sex sexual relations, while other Christians argue Paul had in mind the exploitative or excessive practices of his world, not faithful committed couples.

A broken world described (vv. 28-32)

Paul lists what follows when people push God out of mind, placing murder beside everyday faults like envy, gossip, boasting and disobeying parents, and he ends with people who know such things deserve death yet do them and approve of others who do. Many scholars hear an echo of a familiar Jewish critique of idol worship, which Paul turns around in chapter 2 on anyone who judges others.

Key verse: Romans 1:16

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on what God's righteousness in verse 17 means: many Protestants read it as a right standing God gives as a gift to those who believe, Catholic and Orthodox Christians tend to stress God actually making people righteous, and many recent scholars read it as God's own faithfulness to his promises.

Something to think about

Paul believed the natural world points beyond itself; when you look at the world, does it seem to point to anything for you, and if so, what?