Romans 15 | |
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Epistle to the Romans 15:26-27,32-33 in Papyrus 118, written in the 3rd century.
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Book | Epistle to the Romans |
Bible part | New Testament |
Order in the Bible part | 6 |
Category | Pauline epistles |
Romans 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle, but written by an amanuensis, Tertius, while Paul was in Corinth, in winter of AD 57-58. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians in order to give them a substantial resume of his theology. According to Lutheran theologian Harold Buls, this chapter continues the theme of the weak and strong which Paul had addressed in chapter 14, but the application is now wider than to adiaphora (things neither commanded nor forbidden). "The strong are those who are well-grounded in Scripture and also in practice. The weak are not so well-grounded".
The New King James Version organises this chapter as follows:
In verse 3, Paul quotes from the Septuagint translation of Psalm 69:
He then continues, in order to establish that Christian liberty should be lived out in the service of others and with forbearance towards the weak:
Theologian William Robertson Nicoll states that "everything that was written before" refers to "the whole Old Testament". Lutheran theologian Johann Arndt paraphrases this verse as:
Anglican Bishop Handley Moule, writing in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1891), suggests that Paul develops here "a great principle, namely, that the Old Testament was throughout designed for the instruction and establishment of New Testament believers". Paul elaborates a similar point in 2 Timothy 3:15-16: