For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine (Romans 1:11–12).

Here is an interesting statement by Paul. He writes of imparting "some spiritual gift" to the Roman believers. Many commentators have brushed aside the notion that Paul had any real spiritual gift in mind, like those listed in passages such as Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12; however, I cannot see why this run around is necessary. What theological problem arises from seeing Paul impart spiritual gifts to believers? After all, did he not do this for Timothy?

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (2 Timothy 1:6).

He also did this for the disciples of John the Baptist:

When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied (Acts 19:6).

I have commented before that this imparting of spiritual gifts, particularly by the laying on of hands, seems not something just any believer can do but only the apostles. Even though Philip exercised spiritual gifts, he could not impart any of them. He had to wait for Peter and John. Other than the apostles, among whom Paul is included, no other believer is said to have this power to confer spiritual gifts (note: 1 Timothy 4:14's reference to "elders" is sufficiently vague in terms of reference and may have Paul or the other apostles in mind, for Peter and John are also called elders in 1 Peter 5:1 and 2 John 1).

If, as I have argued, the imparting of spiritual gifts (i.e. gifts of the Holy Spirit) came only by way of the apostles, and particularly through the laying on of their hands, then, what many claim are "spiritual gifts" today are nothing of the sort. These gifts, then, would have passed away, not with the apostles, but with those that the apostles directly influenced.

Friends, today we speak of gifts so willy nilly, making a distinction between the gifts, as if some were supernatural and others were not. Some make a distinction between the prophetic gift of foretelling versus forthtelling. The prophets of old did both, and they were never distinguished in this way, as if one allowed for errors while the other did not. The prophetic gift, in whatever form, was always supernatural and left no room for error. The same goes for every gift of the Spirit. They were all supernatural and revelatory, not skills or talents to be developed through study and practice. I feel that we water down the weight of these gifts simply because what passes for "spiritual gifts" today are not gifts of the Spirit at all, and some want to find biblical justification to claim that they are. This is simply unnecessary and wrong-headed.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Paul’s desire to impart a spiritual gift in Romans 1:11 is immediately followed by a clarification about mutual encouragement through shared faith (1:12). That second sentence should govern how confidently we specify the first. Paul expects to strengthen the Roman believers, but he also expects to receive from them. His apostolic role does not make the relationship a one-way transfer from the spiritually complete to the spiritually empty. The opening of the letter models an authority that can teach while genuinely welcoming another believer’s contribution.

The term gift does not by itself identify a particular miraculous ability. Paul uses gift language across a range of contexts, and Romans 12:6–8 includes service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, and mercy. The original’s appeal to Timothy and the Ephesian disciples supplies relevant comparisons, but it does not prove that Romans 1 describes the same ceremony or kind of gift. A passage can be read in light of another without being made to repeat every feature of it. Here neither laying on of hands nor tongues is mentioned.

The proposed restriction to apostolic transmission also encounters the wider evidence of Acts. Ananias is involved in Saul’s reception of sight and filling with the Spirit, and Cornelius’s household receives the Spirit during preaching. First Corinthians 12 emphasizes distribution according to the Spirit’s will. The fact that apostles have a foundational and distinctive ministry does not mean every other ministry must arise through a single unreported procedure. Nor does calling Peter an elder establish that all elders laying hands on Timothy were apostles.

The original makes a further claim that every spiritual gift is revelatory and cannot be developed through study or practice. That conclusion is difficult to reconcile with the exhortations to diligence in ministry and the varied gifts Paul names. Divine giving and human cultivation need not be alternatives. Timothy is told to attend to his teaching and make progress visible (1 Timothy 4:13–16). A gift can originate in grace and still require disciplined use. Conversely, a natural ability does not become spiritual merely because its possessor performs in a church; its purpose, character, and service to others matter.

Christians differ over which gifts continue and how prophecy should be understood, but the practical direction of Romans 1 is less disputed. Believers should seek to strengthen one another in faith, and leaders should remain open to receiving encouragement. We can evaluate a claimed gift by asking whether it serves the body, accords with the apostolic message, and operates in love rather than self-display. The original’s concern to avoid empty labels is useful when it leads to that examination. It becomes less useful if it dismisses ordinary mercy, careful teaching, or generous service because these do not appear sufficiently extraordinary. The Spirit’s work should direct attention to Christ and the good of his people, not merely to the exceptional status of the person claiming to possess it.

Romans 1

Background on Rome's church:

Nothing is revealed in the New Testament as to the start of the church in Rome. It is possible that visitors to Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost following the Lord's ascension were among the 3000 saved and later took the gospel with them back home (Acts 2:10). Or it could be that among those dispersed following Stephen's death were some that went to Rome and preached the gospel there (Acts 8:1–4).

The first we read of Christians from Rome is possibly that of Aquila and Priscilla, who along with all Jews were expelled from Rome by Claudius and were found by Paul at Corinth during his second journey (Acts 18:1–2). After travelling with Paul to Ephesus and working with the church there (Acts 18:18–19, 24–26; 1 Corinthians 16:19), we find them back at Rome and hosting a church in their house (Romans 16:3–5).

The reputation of the Christians in Rome was widespread; both their faith (1:8) and obedience (16:19) were well known. For this reason Paul had long wanted to see them (15:23), with the goal of sharing in their mutual edification (1:11–12) and to be assisted on his way to Spain (15:22–24).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The absence of a recorded founding event for the Roman church is itself a useful reminder about the spread of the gospel. Acts follows particular witnesses and journeys without claiming to name every person through whom Christian communities began. The original rightly presents returning Pentecost visitors and people dispersed from Jerusalem as possibilities rather than established facts. Acts 2:10 identifies visitors from Rome, but it does not explicitly narrate their founding of the Roman congregation.

Priscilla and Aquila provide a firmer point of contact. Acts 18 places them in Corinth after the expulsion associated with Claudius, and the subsequent references show their participation in ministry across more than one city. Romans 16 then identifies a church meeting in their house. Their story illustrates how ordinary households and movement between cities could become important settings for teaching, hospitality, and the formation of Christian community. The narrative does not require that every such community begin with a publicly recorded apostolic ceremony.

Paul’s language in Romans 1 combines apostolic purpose with a striking expectation of mutual encouragement. He hopes to strengthen the believers, but he also anticipates being encouraged together with them through shared faith. This is not merely a polite way of concealing a one-directional ministry. It gives a theological shape to the relationship: gifts differ, yet the same Lord sustains both the apostle and those he visits. Spiritual authority does not make a servant incapable of receiving encouragement from others.

The planned journey to Spain in Romans 15 further explains why the letter looks beyond local concerns. Paul hopes to visit Rome on the way and receive help for the next stage of his mission. His extended exposition of the gospel therefore belongs within a practical relationship of partnership. Doctrine equips a community to understand the message it is asked to support and the unity in which Jews and Gentiles are called to share.

This makes the later instructions about welcome, conscience, and mutual regard especially significant. A church whose faith is widely known still needs teaching about how to live together. A good reputation does not remove the need for correction, and theological depth is not a luxury separate from mission. The community’s capacity to partner in the gospel is connected with its willingness to receive one another in Christ.

For present churches, the account encourages gratitude for less visible servants. The people who first carried the gospel to a place may not be remembered by name, while those who host, teach, and welcome can shape its future profoundly. Historical uncertainty need not be filled with an invented founder. It can remind us that God’s work exceeds the portion of its history preserved for us. The important response is to join that work faithfully, receiving encouragement as well as offering it and allowing sound teaching to strengthen a generous, outward-looking community.

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all — for we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin (a paraphrase of Romans 3:9).

This is the conclusion of the argument Paul began in Romans 1:18. He makes the case that both Jews and Gentiles — that is, all people — stand guilty before God. No one has escaped the power of sin. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin (a reference to Romans 3:20).

As a corollary, Paul gives a perspective on the Law. It does not and cannot save anyone. What it does for those who hear it is identify their sin.

Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all — rather, we uphold the law (a reference to Romans 3:31). It is not that faith has nullified the law but that faith has upheld its requirements. Paul has just shown that the whole world is under sin, and whatever law you have in mind — nature, conscience, or Moses — no one keeps it. The law only reveals how far short we come.

What the law could not do, God did through redemption in Christ, presenting Him as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of His blood (a reference to Romans 3:25). Christ fulfilled the righteous demands of the Law, and the benefit is received through faith.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The structure the comment traces is Paul's own and is worth seeing whole, since Romans 1–3 is built as a single argument with a trap in the middle. Paul opens with Gentile idolatry, described in terms a Jewish audience would have endorsed, and then turns in chapter 2 on whoever passes judgment — you who judge do the same things. Only after closing both halves does he state the conclusion this comment quotes.

The observation about Romans 3:31 is the more difficult and more interesting one. Paul says faith upholds the law, immediately after arguing that the law cannot justify, and interpreters read the clause in several ways: that faith establishes the law's true function, that Christ's obedience satisfies its demands, or that Paul is anticipating chapter 4 where he shows that justification by faith is what the law itself taught in Abraham's case. The comment's reading leans toward the second, which is defensible.

What the passage does not permit is treating the law as a mistake. Paul goes out of his way to deny that twice, here and in chapter 7.

Paul writes to the church in Rome addressing those who boast in their adherence to the law. His point is that righteousness comes from God through the sacrifice of Christ.

Apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify — a righteousness given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of His blood, to be received by faith, demonstrating His righteousness — so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded — not by a law requiring works, but by the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith (a paraphrase of Romans 3:21–30).

AI-Expanded Reflection

Romans 1–3 is constructed as a trap, and it closes on everyone. Paul opens by describing Gentile idolatry and its consequences in terms his Jewish readers would have found unobjectionable — and then turns in chapter 2 to say that whoever passes judgment on those things has no excuse, because they practice the same things. He proceeds through both groups and arrives at the summary the comment quotes: there is no difference, all have sinned. His catena of Old Testament quotations in 3:10–18 is applied to the whole human race.

This matters for how the chapter is read aloud or taught. Paul is himself a Jew, writing to a congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers, and his argument is specifically that neither group has standing over the other — which is why he asks whether God is the God of Jews only and answers that He is the God of Gentiles too, justifying both by the same faith. Reading Romans 3 as a verdict on one people rather than on all people reverses its point and detaches the verse the comment rightly highlights, that there is no difference, from the sentence it belongs to. Paul's own emotional register toward his kinsmen appears a few chapters later, where he says he has great sorrow and unceasing anguish, and could wish himself cut off for their sake (Romans 9:2–3).

My long commute to and from work is my own time — the only time I have alone. For thirty minutes each way I talk to God and reflect on the days past and the days ahead. I love listening to Christian music during the drive. Yesterday I heard a song on the radio built around the idea that the listener is someone worth dying for — that you are more than flesh and bone, not just a wandering soul who can't be seen or known, and that you should believe you are worth dying for.

Thinking about that message actually upset me, and let me explain why. If I am worth dying for, then Christ did nothing extraordinary in dying for me. If I pay ten thousand dollars for a ring worth ten thousand dollars, I have neither gained nor lost — I simply paid what it was worth. If I am worth dying for and someone dies for me, nothing remarkable has occurred; the person paid fair value. The message of the gospel is the opposite. I am not worth dying for, and Christ died for me anyway. He paid a price far beyond what I am worth. That is what makes the sacrifice extraordinary. To say that I am worth dying for diminishes what Christ actually did.

Paul writes that no one is righteous, not even one; no one understands or seeks God; all have turned away (a paraphrase of Romans 3:10–12).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The economic argument here is sharper than most treatments of grace manage, and it identifies something real: a purchase at fair market value is a transaction, not a gift, and describing the cross as fair value paid does quietly drain it of grace. That much holds.

It's worth adding a distinction the argument doesn't make, though, because without it the conclusion can land somewhere Scripture doesn't go. "Worth" is doing two different jobs in this discussion. There is merit — a claim on God, something owed — and Scripture is unambiguous that no one has any, which is precisely the comment's point. But there is also value — what God Himself assigns to a person — and here Scripture is equally unambiguous in the other direction: human beings are made in God's image (Genesis 1:27), the Father numbers the hairs on their heads (Matthew 10:30), and Christ's own stated reason for the cross is love for the world (John 3:16). Paul's "worthless" in Romans 3 renders a word describing something spoiled or unfit for its purpose, not something of no account.

Holding both is the more accurate position: nothing about us obligated God, and God nevertheless regarded us as worth the cost. Grace is not diminished by the second half — it is what makes the first half survivable. For anyone who reads a line like "I am not worth dying for" and hears it as a verdict on their own value rather than a statement about merit, that distinction matters a great deal, and it is worth stating plainly.

Friends, don't read this book too quickly — it's filled with life-transforming truths about God, about us, and about salvation through Christ. If you read the first three chapters of Romans and conclude there are simply "good people" and "bad people" in the world, you've missed the point, likely blinded by too high an opinion of yourself and a misguided sense of your own righteousness. Paul addresses three groups — the "ignorant" ungodly pagan (1:18–32), the "godly" pagan (2:1–16), and the "Jew" (2:17–29). I've put these in quotes because each group imagines itself righteous before God while actually being unrighteous. Paul argues God has revealed Himself to each group — through creation, conscience, or the Law — leaving all of them without excuse. Then, through a series of rhetorical questions, Romans 3:1–8 voices the frustration of each group in turn: the Jew, then the "godly" pagan, then the "ignorant" ungodly pagan.

So what's the conclusion? That both Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin (Romans 3:9). And in case anyone might claim to be at least partially righteous, Paul continues that there is none righteous, not even one (a paraphrase of Romans 3:10) — and lest someone argue they're partially righteous for seeking God or doing some good, Paul adds that no one understands, no one seeks God, everyone has turned away and become worthless, and no one does good, not a single person (a paraphrase of Romans 3:11–12).

There are certainly passages where "none" doesn't mean "not a single person," and passages where "all" doesn't mean "every individual without exception" — the difference being "all without exception" versus "all without distinction." The first means every single person or thing; the second may only mean every type or category. If I say God saves people of all kinds — Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free — I don't mean every single person will be saved, just that people from every category will be. But if I said God saves literally everyone without exception (hypothetically, since this isn't what the Bible teaches), that would mean something different entirely.

What we have in Romans 3:10–12 is a "none" without exception, not merely without distinction — Paul is arguing every single person is under sin, lacking spiritual understanding, not seeking God, turning away from Him. Why does this matter? It's a strong argument against anyone claiming that unaided human "free will" can supply the faith needed to understand the gospel and receive eternal life through Christ. Paul's answer here is a firm "no way" — the Spirit must regenerate ("new birth") a person before they can grasp the gospel, and God must give the faith itself, by grace, for anyone to believe. What about "free will," then? By free will alone, we only grow more corrupt; by free will alone, we self-destruct and face God's judgment. It's only when God overcomes our "free will" with His grace that we're saved — a careful reading of passages like Ephesians 2:1–10 bears this out.

AI-Expanded Reflection

As with the other extended arguments for this same theological position appearing throughout this collection of comments, it's worth noting once more that this remains one of Christianity's longest-running internal debates — many careful readers of Romans 3 agree entirely on universal human sinfulness (a point virtually all Christian traditions affirm without dispute) while still reading the "free will" question differently, understanding grace as restoring a genuine, though entirely grace-enabled, capacity to respond, rather than eliminating human response from the process altogether. Universal depravity and the mechanics of how grace overcomes it are, in that sense, two related but distinct questions, and this comment's forceful conclusion addresses primarily the second, on which sincere, Bible-believing Christians have long continued to disagree.