Romans

Know what I find the hardest thing about writing these Bible notes up is? The quotations.

I know how whiney this is, but copying and pasting all the quotes across from biblegateway.com, plus adding the bold html is really offputting. Probably because my left four fingers and thumb will typically be bookmarking five pages in my NIV at the time, so my right hand has to work overtime, especially with all those pesky keyboard shortcuts and upper-case characters.

Look – here comes one now:

Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.

- Romans 11:20b (NIV)

Did you see what I did there? I actually typed that one in manually. It struck me as somehow easier.

I mention this purely to pay tribute to Paul(the author of Romans)’s scribe Tertius, who had the unenviable task of not only writing down all of Paul’s words, but of copying out - presumably in longhand - an incredible 58 quotations too.

58 is only a rough number – that’s the number of footnotes in the NIV that direct to another passage. Some of them direct to more than one. I should know – I was up until about 2am this morning looking them all up.

“I know, I’ll read Romans,” I thought, “that’ll be a nice quick read before bed – only 16 chapters…”

Truly, if Acts read like a movie sequel, then Romans is the Biblical equivalent of a clips show. Did the writers of the Bible run out of money that week? Maybe they’d gone over-budget on all the miracles in the previous book.

Imagine the irony then as, reading the whole thing straight through for three hours, I discovered that nearly every epistle quote that I know had originally come from this very book.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

- Romans 8:1 (NIV)

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

- Romans 10:9 (NIV)

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

- Romans 12:4-5 (NIV)

How very green.

Sticking with the body metaphor, what really comes across is the message that salvation is about the state of the heart, and that right and wrong are hard things to nail down in words.

(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

- Romans 2:14-15 (NIV)

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

- Romans 12:2 (NIV)

One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

- Romans 14:2-4 (NIV)

Now that’s a passage I would like to hear quoted more often…