The Letter That Keeps Changing History
Suggested reading: Romans 1:16–17; Romans 13:11–14
Few books have changed as many lives as Romans. Again and again over 2,000 years, God has used this one letter to wake people up, turn them around and spark revival. Here are three of the most famous examples.
Augustine: "Take up and read" (AD 386)
Augustine was brilliant, restless and far from God. He had a successful teaching career in Italy, but he was enslaved to his own desires and knew it. His mother, Monica, had prayed for him for years.
One day in a garden in Milan, overwhelmed and weeping, Augustine heard a child's voice nearby chanting, "Take up and read." He picked up a copy of Paul's letters and opened to Romans 13:13–14, which calls readers to leave behind drunkenness and sexual immorality and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
In his Confessions, Augustine wrote that as he finished the sentence, the darkness of doubt vanished. He became one of the most influential teachers in church history.
Martin Luther: "The righteous shall live by faith" (1500s)
Martin Luther was a German monk who tried desperately to earn God's favor. He fasted, prayed and confessed for hours, yet he lived in fear of God's judgment. He especially struggled with the phrase "the righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17. To him it meant God's standard that condemned him.
As Luther studied Romans, he came to see that this righteousness is a gift God gives to those who believe. We are made right with God by faith, not by our works. Luther later said that it felt as if he had been born again and had entered paradise through open gates.
That discovery helped launch the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The truth of justification by faith alone, so central to Romans, is the heritage of every Baptist church today.
John Wesley: "Strangely warmed" (1738)
John Wesley was an Anglican minister in England. He had even served as a missionary to Georgia, but he returned home feeling like a failure, unsure of his own faith.
On the evening of May 24, 1738, he reluctantly went to a small meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. Someone was reading aloud from Luther's preface to Romans. Wesley later wrote in his journal that as he listened to the description of the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, he felt his heart "strangely warmed." For the first time, he trusted Christ alone for salvation.
Wesley went on to preach tens of thousands of sermons, and the revival that followed reshaped England and helped spread the gospel across the American frontier.
Notice the chain
Augustine's writings shaped Luther, who was an Augustinian monk. Luther's preface to Romans was being read the night Wesley was converted. God used Romans, generation after generation, passing the flame from one life to the next.
Why it still works
Romans keeps changing lives because it tells us the truth about ourselves and the even greater truth about God. We are sinners who cannot save ourselves. God, in Christ, has done what we could not do. That message is still "the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16).
As we study Romans together this season, pray that God would do it again: in our church, in our homes and in your own heart. Take up and read.
Join us Sunday at Harvest Community Church as we continue our journey through Romans.
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