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In this first devotion, we’ll discuss the historical context of what was going on in Rome and the churches there at the time this letter was written.
Romans is a letter to the church, or likely many churches, located in the city of Rome. The apostle Paul, a familiar author throughout the New Testament, wrote the letter. Paul writes Romans sometime around A.D. 55-58, a little more than 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Messiah.
There is no agreement among scholars about who founded the church or churches in Rome that Paul is writing to. It does seem that the church was not founded by any apostles of Jesus, such as Peter or Paul. This specific detail of the church’s founding is not of particular concern to us for our purposes of studying Paul’s letter. What is important for us to know is whether Paul is writing mainly to those in the church who are Jews (those who are descendants of the Israelites), Gentiles (anyone not deemed a Jew), or both. Our conclusions on this topic will affect how we later interpret some of Paul’s statements.
We can gain clues to the composition of the church in Rome through a few key historical events recorded for us both in Scripture and by historians at the time. It is thought that the original founders of the Roman church, whoever they were, were likely to be Jewish converts. Some cite Acts 2:10 as evidence of this. What does become clear is that sometime after its founding, arguments begin to break out between the Orthodox Jews (Jews who reject Jesus as the Messiah) and Messianic Jews (Jews who confess Jesus as Lord and Messiah, Jews who have become Christians). It’s not hard to believe that these two opposing Jewish worldviews would clash regularly. History shows us that these debates became heated, resulting in enough of a disturbance that Claudius, the emperor of Rome at that time, expelled the Jews from Rome in order that peace might be restored. This is supported by the testimony of Acts regarding Prisca’s and Aquila’s eviction from Rome.
“After this, he left Athens and went to Corinth, where he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.” — Acts 18:1-2a
With a majority of the Jewish population gone from Rome, the makeup of the Roman churches would have been predominantly Gentile converts. The death of the Emperor would render his decrees void. Thus, many of the Jews who were previously living in Rome would have likely returned in A.D. 54, when Claudius died and Emperor Nero’s reign began. As the Jewish population returned to Rome, they would have found that the churches they left looked very different than they were used to. This led to disagreements between Jewish and Gentile Christians over many Christian doctrines which Paul addresses in this letter. This fits well with the text in chapters 9-11 and 14-15. Having in mind the composition of the Roman churches will affect how we interpret these texts moving forward.