NT: Romans 6 - 10

Paul ends the prior chapter with a setup:

Rom 5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

...for questions to open Chapter 6:

1 What shall we say then? Shall
continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

He goes on to say that sin is bad, Jesus is good, and

23 For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Chapter 7 brings us some pointed words on marriage, remarriage and adultery, the theme being that the body is inherently sinful, and likes to fuck and fuck and fuck. Paul is apparently hung up by a small weenie. Or he could have been cheated on by a previous lover.

Paul transitions from his “flesh is evil” spiel to a “nothing can change our love for Jesus” thesis in Chapter 8.

From there, we go to (what appears to be) a rant against believers in the Old Testament, who are getting it wrong, because Jesus.

In Chapter 10, Paul gets to the point:

1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
4 For Christ [is] the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

It goes on like this for the rest of this chapter, and on to several more, but I’ll give it a rest here.

Since Romans appears to be both admonishment and pep talk to the new congregation, as well as a polemic against the Jewish non-believers, I could pick out individual “do’s” and “don’t’s” from Pauls letter, but that’s not really my interest. It’s clear that gettin’ jiggy with your naughty bits upsets him, but this letter appears (still) to be directed against Jewish and Christian readers. I’d expect a rant against Roman, Egyptian and other Middle Eastern pagan religions, since my perception has always been that they were looser in the pants than the Jews, and that they would WAY out-number all other religions outside Israel. I wonder if that will ever come up.