The Old Testament and the Letter to the Romans

The letter to the Romans, inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by the Apostle Paul, has a lot of Old Testament in it. I was looking at the footnotes at the bottom of the pages and there are 57 references to the Old Testament listed. In addition, several Bible characters are mentioned in the letter: Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Adam, Isaiah, Elijah and Jesse.

That’s interesting to me because the letter is written to non-Jews, i.e. “Greeks and Barbarians” (1:14)… people who were not raised with Bibles in their homes. Since these people would have no knowledge of the Old Testament then either they were taught the Old Testament in their conversion process or after becoming Christians the Old Testament was taught in their assemblies. I suspect both occurred.

Regardless, Paul’s repeated use of Old Testament references suggests they had a familiarity with it.

Paul’s purpose in writing this letter was to help them become established. Even though their faith was “proclaimed throughout the whole world” (1:8) they still needed to be established. Paul referenced the Old Testament 57 times in this effort to “establish” them.

Even though we now live under a New Law that doesn’t mean we don’t need the old Law.
If we want to be established like the Roman Christians were, then we need to follow Paul’s example in the use of the Old Testament to build a rich and deep faith.