Romans

by John E. Toews

Book Overview

Romans was written by Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. As an apostle Paul spent his life traveling the Mediterranean area preaching the gospel and establishing churches. In the course of his missionary career, Paul wrote numerous letters to the churches he had established as a way to pastor them in his absence. Romans is the longest and most complex of Paul's letters. John E. Toews explores why Paul writes to remind the Roman churches...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 083619277X
• ISBN13: 9780836192773
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Herald Press (VA)
• Length: 463 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

From the cover:

From the book: This commentary on Romans is a rich gift to the contemporary church, its lay leaders, pastors, and scholars. The eighteenth volume in the Believers Church Bible Commentary Series gives new eyes for readers to see what the central message of Romans really is. Growing out of years of scholarship on Romans, the author presents a provocative reinterpretation of Paul's letter.

Vigorous and crucial reading of Romans

John E. Toews - emeritus Professor of New Testament at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary and former President of Conrad Grebel University College - has provided a noticeably fresh, vigorous, and crucial interpretation of Romans. Toews explores each passage of Romans in four sections: a preview, explanatory notes, comment on the text in biblical context, and comments on the text in the life of the church. Toews excels in keeping the big picture in view, while offering breakthrough translations, eye-popping structural analyses, and a cornucopia of insights derived from Jewish and Greco-Roman history and current Pauline scholarship. According to Toews, Paul's thesis and gospel is that God's end-time power has arrived to save or set-right the world, both Jews and Gentiles, which is revealed through both the righteousness of God and the wrath of God (1:16-18). According to Toews, Paul's thesis is then expanded in three major arguments. In the first argument, Paul describes how the wrath of God is poured out impartially on all humanity (1:18 - 3:20). In the second, Paul explains how the righteousness of God is revealed through the "faithfulness of Jesus" (3:21-26) and through God's power "to make people righteous" through faith(fulness), exemplified by Abraham (4:3-25). This means peace with God (5:1-11), solidarity with Christ (5:12-21), liberation from the sin as power, which exploits the law, and submission to the Spirit, who fulfills the law in us (6:1-8:11), and incorporation into the family of God (8:12-39). Since this argument raising questions for Jews, Paul is then forced to explain the Jew-Gentile relationship in God's plan (9:1-11:36). I found Toews' explanations very helpful regarding the difficult and debated chapters of Rom 9-11. In Paul's third argument, the revelation of God's righteousness is revealed in the righteous and faithful community (12:1-15:13), characterized by sacrificial living, non-conformity, and transformation (12:1-2), renewed minds and loving relationships (12:3-16), commitment to the "political realism" of non-retaliation, paying taxes, and loving neighbors (12:17 - 13:14), and tolerant welcoming of one another (14:1-15:13). For many readers, studying Toews' commentary will be like reading Romans again for the first time. First, Toews embraces the New Perspective on Paul. Second, he offers unique translations that are occasionally awkward, often refreshing, but always grammatically and semantically justifiable. And third, he masterful elucidates Paul's apocalyptic, especially sin as an enslaving cosmic power (distinct from acts of transgressions) that can only be overcome by grace and the Spirit. Written for the Believers Church Bible Commentary Series, Toews places Mennonites and Anabaptists in conversation with Paul, which is, of course, unparalleled by any other Romans commentary. For example, after analysis of Rom 5:1-11, readers hear the story of P.M. Friesen making peace (149), after Rom 5:12-21,