Robert Shriner

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS by PAUL Robert Shriner

The Bible is a book of covenants. Understanding and utilizing the biblical covenants is aided greatly by the theological paradigm of "dispensations." The major covenants of the Bible are: The Edenic and Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and the New Covenants. The acknowledged dispensations are the Ages of: Innocence, Conscience, Human Government, Promise, Law, Grace, and the Kingdom. Throughout all these historical dispensations, salvation has always been on the basis of faith in the promised Messiah of God and not through works. All the necessary work required to save man was done by God... for no sinful man could produce the work necessary for salvation. Yeshua (Jesus) was that Messiah! Although the Law of Moses governed the chosen people of Israel for about fifteen hundred years, the Law did not supply salvation, it only prepared its subjects for it. The Apostle Paul wrote in the Epistle to the Galatians: "But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed. So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Messiah, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all children of God, through faith in Messiah Yeshua." (Galatians 3:23-26). Since the Law did not supply salvation, it might be suspected that God would establish a follow-up covenant that would... which he did, the New Covenant. Jeremiah the Prophet confirmed this covenant saying: "Behold, the days come," says the LORD, "that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them," says the LORD. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the LORD: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Jeremiah 31:31-33). Paul's Epistle to the Romans is a theological treatise explaining the role of the Old Covenant and the Law of Moses and their relationship to the New Covenant and the law that governed it... the Law of Yeshua. Although the Apostle Paul was not the founder of the Church at Rome, he chose this congregation to receive his inspired treatise... a book that has blessed untold generations of believers in Messiah and drawn multitudes to salvation in Yeshua!