Well, tomorrow I am leaving my home and family behind in Bismarck and then be spending the next five weeks in the beautiful Rome, Italy. I am a little nervous; the past few nights have been restless as the checklist of things to do and to bring keeps rolling through my mind. I have given up on the fight of keeping my suitcase below fifty pounds and just paying extra. I have never done international travel like this before in my life (well technically you could count the week I spent in Thunder Bay, Ontario. But I wouldn’t count Canada as International travel; I call it going to Canada). The two trips I have planned are to Florence and then to Venice on March 30th through April 1st and will have my first experience of a European Hostel (nervous). And then just a few days after on April 4th through the 6th I will fly to Munich, Germany.
It has been a while since I have written a blog and since I am going on a big adventure of a life time, I figured what a better time to start back up. I really want this series of blogs to have two parts to them. The first part is kind of an online journal of the adventures I have been experiencing in Europe and the second part is my thoughts on the book of Romans. How cool is it going to be to read Paul’s letter to the early church in Romans while you are in Rome! Maybe I’m weird but to me that seems really cool. To help me understand and work through Romans I am using the MacArthur Bible Commentary. I don’t know if that’s the best one but that’s the only one I got and I am a poor college student.
I am experiencing a weird set of emotions including being excited, nervousness, and anxiousness. The Italian language has not been good to me. I guess I don’t have the Italian blood in me. Maybe German it more suited for me, it’s not as pretty sounding. I am really excited about what Romans will add to the experience. I have read Romans at least three or four times before but I have never gone in-depth like this before. When Martin Luther read through the book of Romans and studied it and changed the world because of the power of the words the books contains. John MacArthur has said “It's amazing if you just go back in history and see how the book of Romans affected people's lives. The greatest reformations and revivals that we know about were results of the power of this book.”
For example, in the summer of A.D. 386 a man named Augustine, a native of north Africa, who had for two years been the professor of rhetoric at Milan, sat weeping in the garden of his friend, Alpeous(?). He was almost persuaded to begin a new life and yet he found it impossible to break with his old life. As he sat, historians tell us that he heard a child singing in a neighboring yard, "Tolei Legae, Tolei Legae(?)" a little melody that says "Take up and read...take up and read."
It struck him that perhaps that was something he should do and so he picked up a scroll which lay at his friend's side, that scroll contained a portion of the book of Romans. He read it, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof."
"No further would I read," he said, "nor had I any need, instantly at the end of this sentence a clear light flooded my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away." And in that very moment from one sentence in the book of Romans the church received the great Augustine...the framer of much of its theology.
In November, 1515 there was a priest by the name of Martin Luther who himself was known as an Augustian monk, who was the professor of sacred theology in the Catholic university of Wittenberg(?). And to his students he began to expound the epistle to the Romans. And from November of 1515 to the following September of 1516, he daily spent himself in the understanding of that epistle. And as he daily prepared his lectures, he became more and more appreciative of the centrality of the Pauline doctrine of justification by...what?...faith. He writes, "I greatly longed to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, `the righteousness of God.' Because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous. Night and day I pondered until I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby through grace and sheer mercy he justifies us by faith. There upon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise, the whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the righteousness of God had filled me with hate, it now began to fill me inexpressably with a sweet love. The passage of Paul became to me the gateway to heaven." And need I say what contribution Martin Luther made?
It was the evening of May 24, the year was 1738. There was a man by the name of John Wesley. His biographer says that he went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where a man was reading Luther's Preface to the epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine he wrote in his journal while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, "I myself felt my heart strangely warmed." Wesley goes on, "I felt I did trust in Christ and Christ alone for my salvation and an assurance was given me that He had taken my sins away, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death." And so it was in Aldersgate Street at the reading of the book of Romans that John Wesley was redeemed. And we all know the contribution he made.
The book of Romans is many times considered the Apostle Paul’s greatest works. I have heard it be called the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Romans chapter three alone has to be the most concise portrayal of the Christian gospel. No other book in the New Testament quotes the Old Testament more than the book of Romans does. If you have never read through Romans before, I encourage you to do so and I would love feedback. May God give me safe travels and may He build us up in faith and love to boldly proclaim the truth of His glorious gospel. May the Holy Spirit soften hard hearts and open ears to the truths of God and His wonderful Scriptures.
“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” Romans 1:16-17
Soli Deo Gloria,
Mitchel Nickolauson
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