Historical Context Romans

Kenny Bass

The letter to the Romans was written by the Apostle Paul as stated in Romans 1:1 ESV
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God…” The
authorship of Paul to the letter to the Romans is so certain, many scholars have used this letter
to claim Paul’s authorship in other letters. Paul wrote the letter of Romans to a group of people
he had never personally visited, even though he had openly expressed his desire to travel there
(Romans 1:10-12). The letter was not physically written by Paul but authored by Paul by the
hands of one of his writers, Tertius (Romans 16:22).

Paul writes his letter to the Romans from the Greek city of Corinth. The dating of the
letter, unlike other New Testament letters, is consistently view by scholars to be written around
AD 57 or 58. The writing happened three years after a teenage boy named Nero had ascended
to the throne as the Emperor of Rome. Many believe the church of Roman was under
persecution which caused Paul to write his letter. But Nero did not begin persecuting the
believers until he made them scapegoats after the great Roman fire in AD 64. Therefore, Paul
wrote to the church in Rome during a time of peace, shortly after his third missionary journey.
This three-month period after his journey would have afforded Paul time to compose his letter
to the Romans.

There are multiply reasons Paul wrote Romans. By the end of Paul’s third missionary
journey, he had returned to Jerusalem with support for the church there (Romans 15:25-26).
Paul’s aid was not just for material suffering, but it was a symbolic movement concerning the
new unity the Jews and Gentiles had built around Christ. Paul felt that since the Romans had
come to share in the spiritual blessings of Israel, then they should also contribute to their
Jewish believers by helping out with aid (Romans 15:27). But most importantly Paul wrote
Romans to guide the Jews and Gentile relationships that was founded in the New Covenant of
Jesus Christ. This was a revolutionary period for the Jewish believers to fully understand that
the ceremonial facets of the law of Moses were no longer needed for salvation. This situation
was worsened when Emperor Claudius banished the Jews and Jews Christians from Rome in AD
49, which would have caused the church in Rome to become predominantly Gentile. When
Claudius died in AD 54, some Jews would have returned to Rome finding a church occupied by
Gentiles, causing the church’s demographics to become a mix between Jews and Gentiles. This
mixture caused tensions within the church in Rome. Paul addresses these tensions when he
addressed the issues of the Jewish calendar, Jewish sensitivity when it came to food laws and
food sacrificed to idols. Paul’s overarching reasons for writing Romans was to clearly show in
great details to the Jews and Gentiles what it means to have freedom in Christ Jesus.