Bible Studies

Introduction To TheBook of Romans, part 3

by Mike Stockwell
03/23/17
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Good day to all. Last time we learned how Saul was a protector of Judaism. Well, this Jesus of Nazareth had turned Jewish thinking upside down. The Jews had been taught to hate their enemies; Jesus said to love them. The Jews feared and reverenced the Pharisees and Sadducees, their religious leaders. Jesus called these men “whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones and hypocrites, the blind leading the blind. Matthew 23.

And the Jews loved the Mosaic Law, the 10 commandments given on the mount by Moses, and the sacrificial system built on that foundation. Jesus said to them that although the Law is good and holy, it cannot save them.

No wonder Saul and his contemporaries were furious. In Acts 6, 7, 8 we see the story of  Stephen’s martyrdom. He was an early disciple who preached Christ to a large gathering of Jewish leaders. In the end they could not stand his words, which pointed to their guilt and condemnation, and they rushed on him and stoned him to death. Saul held their coats as they murdered this man of God. It says in the beginning of chapt. 8: “Now Saul was consenting to his death.

It then says a great persecution against the Jerusalem church arose, scattering believers everywhere. Saul chased them in order to accuse and  imprison any Christian and to vote for their execution. He was as passionate and zealous about this as any man could be.

Acts 9 tells us this: “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any that were of the Way (the new Christian faith), whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem."

What happens next is one of the most amazing conversions in all of human history. Don’t miss the next post. In His love…Mike.

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