I can’t begin to described the excitement I feel over beginning the book of Romans. Perhaps, I feel a little like Sir Edmund Hillary felt when he looked at Mt. Everest. While I haven’t been quick to take on “Mt. Everest,” I’m now ready to begin the climb.
Lloyd-Jones gave a sense of the scale of Romans in his series. He began with the question of why Romans is the first of Paul’s books in the Bible. He notes that Romans was not the first of Paul’s books to be written and then goes on to say:
I would suggest to you that [Romans] is here in the first position because the church was given the wisdom by the Holy Ghost to realize that it is first in importance . . .
Now surely this is something we can well emphasize. It has been the universal opinion in the Christian church throughout the centuries that Romans is the Epistle above all which deals with fundamentals, and if you look at the history of the church I think you will see that has been borne out time and time again. There is a sense in which we can say quite truthfully that the Epistle to the Romans has, possibly, played a more important and crucial part in the history of the church than any other single book in the whole of the Bible. That is a matter of very great significance. We are to read and to study the whole Bible – – yes! But if it is evident from the history of the church that one particular book seems to have been used in an exceptional manner, surely it behooves us to give it exceptional attention. (Volume 1, emphasis added, pages 2-3).
I’ve never preached through Romans, although I’ve taken sections of it several times. My favorite book to preach has been Ephesians (which I’m doing a 2nd time before even getting to Romans). Yet recently a man left our church over not liking my preaching. When I asked him what he didn’t like he pointed out that a refered to the book of Romans too often. Who knows, maybe there’s a compliment in there somewhere.