The next Pauline letter that needs to be considered in a chronological presentation of the “books” of the New Testament (NT) is his letter to the Romans. It is his longest letter and distinctive in many ways. Only his First Corinthians is a serious rival. Romans is his only letter to people he did not know. Although he ended up dying in Rome, he was never there during his long and glorious ministry. Unlike Paul’s other letters, it does not deal with highly specific issues. It is probably his last letter. Though a small minority of scholars think that the prison letters (Philippians, Philemon and Colossians) are later, most think Romans is the last of the universally agreed upon seven genuine Pauline letters. He is thought to have written his    letter to the Romans from Corinth around the year 58 CE, just before he began what became his final journey to Jerusalem,   arrest, imprisonment, and eventual execution in Rome itself. It should be remembered that he was not arrested in Rome but, after his arrest in Jerusalem, he was taken to Rome because he was a Roman citizen and, therefore, had to be tried and sentenced in Rome.

So Romans is not about interacting with a community he had founded or with which he had a continuing relationship. Rather, its main purpose was to introduce himself to a group of Christ-followers whom he planned to visit and from whom he hoped to receive support for a mission to Spain. He did so by telling them about his theology – his understanding of Jesus’ teachings and God’s revelation. In this letter he presents the significance of Jesus as he understood Him and its meaning for thinking about God, transformation and the new life in Christ.

The letter to the Romans thus has an additional distinction. It is Paul’s most theological letter and the most important of his letters in the history of Christian thought. In the late fourth century St. Augustine purports to have been converted by a passage in Romans. The basic tenet of Protestantism, that is namely justification by faith alone, is said to have been drawn from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

The implication of Paul’s exposition of justification by faith rather than by the law is that the divine plan of salvation works itself out on a broad theological plane to include the whole of humanity despite the differences in the content of the given religious system to which a human culture is heir. Romans contains a powerful exposition of the doctrine of the supremacy of Christ and of faith in him as the source of salvation. It is an implicit plea to the Christians of Rome to hold fast to that faith. They are to resist any pressure put on them to accept a doctrine of salvation through works of the law. At the same time they are not to exaggerate Christian freedom through repudiation of law itself. The traditional understanding is that faith, with good works, brings salvation.