This is John a Bible project and today we are going to continue our conversation on the

family of God, a biblical theme in the Bible.

In the next two episodes we're going to look at the Apostle Paul and what he has to say

about the family that God is creating.

Paul saw himself as an apostle to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, the nations and he planted many

of the early first Jesus communities and he wanted them to live in unity even though

they come from so many different backgrounds.

Well today we're going to look at Paul's letter to the Romans.

The letter to the Romans is Paul's longest letter in the New Testament and it isn't a

letter of Paul just waxing theological about God's salvation.

Paul wrote this letter for a specific purpose to champion a vision that he had for the

Jesus communities in Rome.

And so Paul really, his dream is for a unified, multi-ethnic family of God and that's what

all the theology he packs into chapters 1 through 11 of the letters about.

So why was the church fractured in Rome?

What happened was the Roman government expelled all of the Jews and that included Jewish

Christians.

Later Jews were able to come back to Rome and so these Jewish Christians came back to

these church communities and what they found was that the church there had kind of moved

on and saw themselves as superior.

The Jews didn't have any status in these church communities anymore and there was conflicts

about how to reintegrate.

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