Biblical Profile: The Roman Church

The Roman Church

The details of the founding of the church in Rome are not known with certainty. There was a large Jewish population in Rome, and some Jews from Rome were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost at the birth of the church (Acts 2:10). The most likely explanation, then, is that some of these Jews converted to Christianity and took the Good News about Jesus the Messiah to Rome, where a Christian community was born from within the synagogues of Rome. It is unlikely that Peter founded the Roman church or that he was present in Rome by the time Paul wrote to the Roman Christians around AD 57; otherwise, Paul would certainly have greeted him. Consequently, Paul wrote this letter to help ensure that the Roman church had apostolic involvement in their faith. He never wrote to the churches of Judea, founded by the other apostles, but only to churches that either he had founded (e.g., Corinth, Galatia) or to those that had no direct apostolic involvement (e.g., Colosse, Rome).

In time, the Jewish Christians in Rome would have been pushed out of the synagogues by the non-Christian Jews, as happened elsewhere. By the time Paul wrote to the Roman church, they were meeting as separate house churches in private homes (Rom 16:5, 10-11, 15). There were no centralized edifices, and it is uncertain whether the whole body of believers in Rome met together.

When Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome (around AD 49), the Jewish Christians were also forced to leave, among whom were Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18:2). In the absence of the Jews, the Roman church would have become Gentile in character. When the Jews returned (probably shortly after the death of Claudius in AD 54), there were no doubt questions—if not conflicts—among the Jewish and Gentile Christians. Paul may have written Romans to settle such controversies among this mixed group of Jews and Gentiles worshiping Christ in the same city.