> Author's preface
>
> 'Not another commentary on Romans?' My friend groaned
> audibly. There was pain in his voice and in his eyes. And I sympathi
> zed with him. For the literature surrounding Romans is so massive as
> to be unmanageable. I have myself read about thirty commentaries, n
> ot to mention numerous other works which relate to Paul and Romans,
> and still there are many more which I have not had time to study. Is
> it not a folly then, even an impertinence, to add yet another book
> to this huge library? Yes, it would be, were it not for the three di
> stinctives of The Bible Speaks Today (BST) series which perhaps, if
> taken together, may justify it.
> First, BST authors (like all other commentators) are committed
> to a serious study of the text in its own integrity. Although a pre-
> suppositionless approach is impossible (and all the commentators
> tend to be recognizably Lutheran or Reformed, Protestant or
> Catholic, liberal or conservative), yet I have known that my first
> responsibility has been to seek a fresh encounter with the authentic
> Paul. Karl Barth, in his preface to the first edition of his famous
> Römerbrief (1918), called this an 'utter loyalty' to Paul, which
> would allow the apostle to say what he does say and would not force
> him to say what we might want him to say.
> This principle has made it necessary for me to listen
> respectfully to those scholars who are offering us a 'new perspectiv
> e on Paul', especially Professors Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders an
> d J. D. G. Dunn. Their claims that both Paul and Palestinian Judaism
> have been gravely misunderstood have to be taken seriously, althoug
> h I note that the most recent commentator, the American Jesuit schol
> ar Joseph Fitzmyer, whose work appeared in 1993 and was hailed by th
> e reviewers as 'monumental' and 'magisterial', almost
> entirely ignores this debate. All I have felt able to do is to sketc
> h a brief explanation and evaluation of it in my Preliminary Essay.
> But expositors should not be antiquarians, living only in the
> remote past. Reverting to Barth, it was his conviction that Paul,
> although 'a child of his age', who addressed his contemporaries,
> also 'speaks to all men of every age'. So he celebrated the
> 'creative energy' with which Luther and Calvin had wrestled with
> Paul's [Romans, Page 10] message 'till the walls which separated
> the sixteenth century from the first became transparent'. And the sa
> me dialectical process between ancient text and modern context must
> continue today, even though many commentators confine themselves to
> exegesis without application.
> I confess that, ever since I became a Christian fifty-six years
> ago, I have enjoyed what could be termed a 'love-hate'
> relationship with Romans, because of its joyful-painful personal cha
> llenges. It began soon after my conversion, with chapter 6 and my lo
> nging to experience that 'death to sin' which it seemed to
> promise. I toyed for many years with the fantasy that Christians are
> supposed to be as insensitive to sin as a corpse is to external sti
> muli. My final deliverance from this chimera was sealed when I was i
> nvited to give the Keswick Convention 'Bible Readings' on Romans
> 5–8 in 1965, which were subsequently published under the title Men M
> ade New.
> Next, it was Paul's devastating exposure of universal human sin
> and guilt in Romans 1:18–3:20 which rescued me from that kind of sup
> erficial evangelism which is preoccupied only with people's 'felt
> needs'. The very first sermon I preached after my ordination in 1945
> , in St Peter's Church, Vere Street, was based on the repeated Roman
> s statement that 'there is no distinction' between us (3:22 and
> 10:12), either in our sin or in Christ's salvation. Then there was R
> omans 12 and its demand for our whole-hearted commitment in response
> to God's mercies, and Romans 13, whose teaching about the use of fo
> rce in the administration of justice made it impossible for me to re
> main a total pacifist in the Tolstoy-Gandhi tradition. As for Romans
> 8, although I have declaimed its final triumphant verses at innumer
> able funerals, I have never lost the thrill of them.
> I have not been altogether surprised, therefore, in the course
> of writing this exposition, to observe how many contemporary issues
> are touched on by Paul in Romans: enthusiasm for evangelism in
> general and the propriety of Jewish evangelism in particular;
> whether homosexual relationships are 'natural' or
> 'unnatural'; whether we can still believe in such unfashionable
> concepts as God's 'wrath' and 'propitiation'; the
> historicity of Adam's fall and the origin of human death; what are t
> he fundamental means to living a holy life; the place of law and of
> the Spirit in Christian discipleship; the distinction between assura
> nce and presumption; the relation between divine sovereignty and hum
> an responsibility in salvation; the tension between ethnic identity
> and the solidarity of the body of Christ; relations between church a
> nd state; the respective duties of the individual citizen and the bo
> dy politic; and how to handle differences of opinion within the Chri
> stian community. And this list is only a sample of the modern questi
> ons which, directly or indirectly, Romans raises and addresses.
>
> [Romans, Page 11]
>
> The third characteristic of the BST series is that each book is
> intended to be both readable in style and manageable in size. A
> commentary, in distinction to an exposition, is a reference work and
> to that extent unreadable. Moreover, many of the most influential
> commentaries on Romans have been published in two volumes, such as
> those by C. H. Hodge, Robert Haldane and John Murray, and those in
> our own day by Professors Cranfield and Dunn. As for the late Dr
> Martyn Loyd-Jones, his penetrating exposition of Romans 1–9 runs to
> nine volumes, comprising more than 3,000 pages. By contrast with the
> se multi-volume works, which I fear many busy Christian leaders do n
> ot have time to read, I have been determined from the beginning to l
> imit this exposition to one volume (even though a bulky one!), while
> at the same time making available to readers some of the fruits of
> my study of the larger works.
> I am grateful to Brian Rosner and David Coffey for reading the
> manuscript and making suggestions, a number of which I have adopted;
> to Colin Duriez and Jo Bramwell of IVP for their patient editorial
> skills; to David Stone for compiling the study guide; to Nelson Gonz
> ález, my current study assistant, for giving himself the punishing t
> ask of reading the manuscript four times, and for deftly putting his
> finger on weak places where clarification or elaboration was needed
> ; and, last but not least, to Frances Whitehead, whose undiminished
> enthusiasm, energy and efficiency have combined to produce yet anoth
> er impeccable script.
> At the beginning of his fourth-century exposition of Romans,
> Chrysostom spoke of how much he enjoyed hearing Paul's 'spiritual
> trumpet'.1 My prayer is that we may hear it again in our day and may
> readily respond to its summons.
> JOHN STOTT
> Easter 1994
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