In November 1515, Martin Luther, Augustinian monk and doctor of sacred theology at the University of Wittenberg, began his expositions of Romans. As he prepared his lectures he came to see more clearly the meaning of Paul’s gospel of justification by faith. The phrase the “righteousness of God” he had once hated as demanding what he could not deliver. Now in his study he came to see righteousness as a gift of God by which a person came to live, by faith. And he felt himself reborn. The consequence of this new insight the world knows. The Protestant Reformation had been born.
Throughout the centuries this Epistle has in a peculiar way been able to furnish an impulse for spiritual renewal. When the church had drifted away from the gospel, a deep study of Romans has repeatedly been the means by which the loss has been recovered. George Lyons and Dr. William Greathouse move verse-by-verse through Romans 1–8 after providing an in-depth introduction.
