We begin a trek through the book of Romans today, starting with an overview of this epistle. This is not intended to be a lecture, but a framework for us to better comprehend God’s message to us.
To get the right understanding from a passage of Scripture, we need to have some knowledge of the historical and biblical context of the passage we are fixin’ to read. There is one over-arching narrative in all of Scripture, from Creation to re-creation, and that story is the gospel narrative – Creator God revealing Himself as such, contrasting His holiness with our sin, promising and providing a redeemer to reconcile sinful men to Himself and to ultimately make His home with us.
While not every passage in the Bible is part of the gospel, the tale of our Redeemer is the central focus of the whole of Scripture and every message taught from it must point to Christ.
Further, one must determine the nature of the communication: is it historical narrative, prophecy, poetry, instruction? And we must know the audience of the passage and how we relate to them. Instructions written to those in the Mosaic Covenant have something to teach us, but not necessarily the same points or application as intended for them. The covenant you are in helps determine how to apply Scripture. Christians are in the New Covenant, not the Old one.
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