Dear Empire: Romans 1:1-7

Enjoy this sermon on the beginning of Romans 1. Here Pastor Nikayla opens up the book of Romans to set us off into a 10 week series. 

 

No book of the Bible has played a more significant role in shaping Evangelical theology than the book of Romans. Penal Substitutionary theories of atonement and reformed theologies are largely shaped by texts in Romans.

Romans is the most written about, most taught, and most memorized book in the Bible. If you've ever attended a seminar on how to convert your friends to Christianity, you likely learned to use the Romans Road:
Romans 3:10 (all have sinned and fall short the glory of God), Romans 5:8 (but God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die while we were still sinners), Romans 10:9-10 (if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord you will be saved), Romans 8:1 (for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ). See? It's the big kahuna of the Bible and our go-to for Christianese.

Romans is easily treated like a grab bag of quotes when in fact, it's a brilliantly crafted letter written by Paul to the Roman Church whom he hadn’t met. This was Paul's final letter. He wrote it from Corinth, hoping the Roman churches would help fund his missionary journey to Spain. When he finally arrived there, however, he was in chains and eventually executed by the Roman Empire. It's his desperate attempt to cast a vision for a divided community attempting to live in the pull between the dominant culture and the radically alternative vision of the Kin-dom of God. Sound familiar?

Paul begins his letter to the Romans by introducing himself as a slave. So let's spend 10 weeks reading through those eyes and together let’s heed the call to - LOVE over power - community over individual rights and freedoms – and generous hospitality over fear of one another.