Why Did Paul Write Romans? Part 2

In part one, we ended by explaining how replacement theology—the idea that the Church has replaced Israel as God’s people, taking her promises, and left her the curses—became the dominant position on Israel, beginning with the Church Fathers. However, we can see the roots of replacement theology already starting to form in the young Roman church. Satan wasted no time in turning the Ecclesia, a new entity made up of Jews and Gentiles, against the Jewish people.

Paul Breaks His Rule

Every book in the Bible that Paul wrote was written to a church where he had direct apostolic authority or to people who looked to him for apostolic leadership, such as Timothy and Titus. However, Paul had never visited the Roman believers, but he had heard good things (Rom 1:8). He told them he longed to see them (Rom 1:10-11). But this is not merely a love letter. Paul only writes letters to congregations to address problems.

Philippians was written because of a controversy rooted in pride between two of the leaders. Philemon was written to ask for mercy for the slave Onesimus. 1 Corinthians addresses a host of problems from divisions to tolerating sexual sin.

So what problem is Paul addressing in Rome? It must be a doozy because Paul is breaking his own rule in writing to a group of believers over whom he does not have direct apostolic authority.

Suetonius and Chrestus

Let’s turn to acclaimed Bible teacher David Pawson:

Then came the emperor Claudius. During his reign in Rome he had to deal with a lot of civic unrest, which seems to have happened among the Jews in Rome, of whom there were forty thousand in those days. The historical records tell us that the unrest arose over someone called “Chrestos”, which is probably the Roman name for Christ, and that therefore the Jews in Rome were being stirred up as they had been all around the empire. Wherever Paul went, he upset as many Jews as he [brought to faith in Yeshua]. Here we have the same thing happening again. Claudius, quite an immature emperor, said, “All Jews must leave Rome,” and he banished them. You read about that in Acts 18. When Claudius said that every Jew had to leave Rome, that included the believing Jews. Those who believed in Yeshua HaMashiach were kicked out along with all the other Jews. Then, of course, the Roman church became a totally Gentile church (Pawson’s Commentary on Romans, 7).

History confirms the issue of Chrestos. The Roman historian Suetonius writes, “Because the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.” (Suetonius, Claudius 25.4) Scholars have long debated whether Suetonius’s mention of “Chrestus” is, in fact, a misspelling or alternate form referring to “Christus” (Latin for “Christ”), but given the fact that there is no other explanation and that Acts 18 refers to Priscilla and Aquila as Messianic Jews who were exiled, we can hypothesize that the controversy over, whether or not Yeshua was the promised Jewish Messiah, was why Claudius—who himself was thought to be a god—kicked them all out of Rome.

No Bible Leads to Bad Doctrine

When the Jews left, they took something very precious with them. You have to understand that at the time, there was no New Testament. The Book of Romans was not written when Paul wrote the book of Romans! (Think about that for a moment). Even the letters he had written that would one day become part of the biblical canon—the officially recognized books of the Bible—were only considered letters then.

When Paul speaks of the Scriptures being “God-breathed” (1 Tim 3:16), he is referring to the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, known by the acronym The Tanakh [1] or the Hebrew Bible. When the 40,000 Jews were exiled from Rome, they took their scrolls with them. There was no such thing as having the Bible on your phone or iPad at that time. The only type of tablet they had was an actual stone tablet! The only place to study the Bible was to listen to the weekly readings in the synagogue. This is one reason why Jewish believers continued to go to the traditional synagogue and then met later in the day on Saturday night as believers (Acts 20:7). Jacob (James) confirms this: “For [Moses] is read every Sabbath in the synagogues” (Acts 15:21).

During these five years, the young Roman congregation had no Bible. And the Jews, who were most familiar with the Bible, were gone. It appears that at this time, the Gentile Romans developed anti-Jewish attitudes. How do we know this? Just look at Paul’s arguments. In chapter 9, Paul explains God’s heart for the restoration of Israel by proclaiming that he himself would go to hell if it would bring the Jewish people to their Messiah. In chapter 10, he begins by saying that he desires to see the Jewish people come to salvation in Messiah Yeshua. But in chapter 11, he is the most emphatic.

Paul is Concerned

He begins by asking if God has rejected the Jewish people. In Greek, his answer is literally, “No, may it never be?” or, as the KJV translates it, “God forbid.” The learned rabbi explains that God has an End-Time plan for the Jewish people. They have gone through a temporary hardening of heart to give the Gentiles time to turn to Yeshua. But at the fullness of the Gentiles, he tells them that all Israel will come to faith. (see v. 25-26). He implores them not to develop judgmental attitudes towards the Jewish people (vv.17-24).

Paul fights hard to implore the Roman believers and generations of Christians who would come after them to have a proper understanding of Israel, faith for her return, and gratitude for bringing the gospel to the Gentiles (Rom 5:25-27). Sadly, Paul’s words may have had an impact in the first century, but by the mid-second century, the Church was as blinded to God’s plan for Israel as Israel itself was blinded to the messiahship of Yeshua.

Could You Blame Them?

However, if you looked around in the middle of the second century, it did appear that God had broken his promise to Israel. She did not resemble his covenant people. General Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, demolishing, defiling, and looting the Holy Temple. Emperor Hadrian had crushed the Jewish revolt, which resulted from his ban on circumcision and other Jewish rites, and his plans to turn Jerusalem into a pagan city with a temple dedicated to Jupiter.

In the aftermath of the war, Jews were banned from entering Jerusalem. To ethically cleanse the region from its Jewish roots, Hadrian renamed the region Palaestina. (That’s right, the word Palestine was given to the region by a Roman emperor and has no connection to the people who today refer to themselves as Palestinians.) This symbolic measure sought to sever the people of Israel from her historic homeland. His measures led to the exile of Jews from Judea.

So, if you are a Roman Christian in 150 CE and you’re reading the promises of God about Israel, it is confusing. They were exiled and destroyed. They’re hated and persecuted. The Roman attitudes towards Jews that developed from the pagan Hadrian found a home in the Church. Clearly, God had rejected Israel forever … or did he?

We’ll talk more in Part Three.

Part 1

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[1]  Tanakh is an acronym: T – Torah (תּוֹרָה), N – Nevi’im (נְבִיאִים, “Prophets”), Kh – Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים, “Writings”).