1. The occasion of the letter
1. The occasion of the letter
Paul spent the ten years from AD 47 to 57 in intensive evangelization of the territories east and west of the Aegean Sea. During those years he concentrated in succession on the Roman provinces of Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Along the main roads of these provinces and in their principal cities the gospel had been preached and churches had been planted. Paul took with proper seriousness his commission as Christ’s apostle among the Gentiles, and now he might well contemplate with grateful praise not (he would have said) what he had done, but what Christ had done through him. His first great plan of campaign was concluded. The churches he had planted in Iconium, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus and many another city in those four provinces could be left to the care of their spiritual leaders, under the overruling direction of the Holy Spirit.
But Paul’s task was by no means finished. During the winter of AD 56–57, which he spent at Corinth in the home of his friend and convert Gaius, he looked forward (with some misgivings) to a visit which had to be paid to Jerusalem in the immediate future—for he had to see to the handing over to the elders of the church there of a gift of money which he had been organizing for some time past among his Gentile converts, a gift which he hoped would strengthen the bond of Christian love between the mother church in Judea and the churches of the Gentiles.1
When that business had been transacted, Paul looked forward to the launching of a plan which had been taking shape in his mind over the past few years. With the conclusion of his apostolic mission in the Aegean lands, he must find fresh fields to conquer for Christ. In making choice of a new sphere of activity, he determined to go on being a pioneer; he would not settle down as an apostle in any place to which the gospel had already been brought; he would not ‘build on another man’s foundation’ (Rom. 15:20). His choice fell on Spain, the oldest Roman province in the west and the chief bastion of Roman civilization in that part of the world.
But a journey to Spain would afford him the opportunity of gratifying a long-standing ambition—the ambition to see Rome. Although he was a Roman citizen by birth,2 he had never seen the city whose freeman he was. How wonderful it would be to visit Rome and spend some time there! All the more wonderful because there was a flourishing church in Rome, and several Christians whom Paul had met elsewhere in his travels were now resident in Rome and members of that church. The very fact that the gospel had reached Rome long before Paul himself ruled out Rome as a place where he could settle for pioneer evangelism; but he knew that he would continue his journey to Spain with all the more zest if he could first of all refresh his spirit by some weeks of fellowship with the Christians in Rome and then, perhaps, be provided by them with a base for his advance into Spain.
During the early days of AD 57, therefore, he dictated to his friend Tertius—a Christian secretary possibly placed at his disposal by his host Gaius—a letter destined for the Roman Christians. This letter was to prepare them for his visit to their city and to explain the purpose of his visit; and he judged it wise while writing it to set before them a full statement of the gospel as he understood and proclaimed it.3
One reason for his setting this full statement before them may have been his awareness that his message was being misrepresented by his opponents in various places; he seizes the opportunity to set the record straight. But more than that: he probably wishes to involve the Roman Christians in his ministry. He bespeaks their prayers for his safety in Judea; but if it turned out that he was ‘not only to be imprisoned but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Acts 21:13), he would like to know that the continuation of his witness—especially its western extension to Spain—could confidently be entrusted to such a faithful body of people as the Christian community of Rome.