It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that if you understand Paul’s letter to the Romans you understand the Bible. Said otherwise, the person with no knowledge of the rich truths of Romans will necessarily have a weak understanding of the Christian faith. Conversely, the person with extensive knowledge of it will have a much enhanced understanding of the Christian faith. It truly has that central a place in the Scriptures.

Thankfully, we are well resourced when it comes to Romans. Some of the greatest books and richest commentaries are meant to guide Christians in their understanding of it. And new to the field is an especially helpful resource by Andy Naselli. Romans: A Concise Guide to the Greatest Letter Ever Written provides verse-by-verse commentary that is especially intended to help the reader trace the argument Paul is making throughout it—an argument Naselli summarizes as “the gospel reveals how God is righteously righteousing (i.e., justifying) unrighteous individuals—both Jews and Gentiles—at this stage in the history of salvation.”
Though it’s not my custom to copy and paste a book’s table of contents, in this case I think it is helpful as it shows how Naselli divides the book thematically around the theme of God’s righteousness.

Introduction (1:1–17)
The Universal Need for God’s Righteousness (1:18–3:20)
The Means of Obtaining God’s Righteousness (3:21–4:25)
Benefits of Obtaining God’s Righteousness (5:1–8:39)
The Vindication of God’s Righteousness (9:1–11:36)
Living in Light of God’s Righteousness (12:1–15:13)
Conclusion (15:14–16:27)

As he goes he provides concise verse-by-verse (or perhaps, better, several-verse-by-several-verse) commentary. He often pauses to offer expanded explanations of key concepts and disputed texts. He also provides thorough and often extended annotations. At the end he suggests introductory and advanced resources to study Romans in greater depth and offers a fairly extensive study guide. (Additionally, his phrase diagram of Romans is published by Logos and available on their platform.)
This book is meant to be read alongside Romans and can be used for individual or group study. It can nicely complement traditional and more in-depth commentaries, whether for lay-persons, students, or pastors. It will prove especially valuable, I think, in its concision and in the way it avoids much of the nitty-gritty to maintain its focus on the central themes and argument.
If you wish to know Romans better, and especially to understand it as a cohesive and coherent work of literature, you will benefit tremendously from this book. Andy Naselli is a skilled and trustworthy guide who will lead you deep into the greatest letter ever written. Through it, the Lord will inform your mind, shape your heart, and change your life.

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So much of what we experience in this life is so very heavy. So many of the burdens God calls us to carry are so tremendously weighty that they threaten to crush us to the dust. We bear the weight of our own sin and depravity, the shame of doing evil and the pain of failing to do good. We bear the weight of other people’s sin and depravity as they hurt and harm us, sometimes intentionally and sometimes purely inadvertently. We bear the weight of griefs and losses, of illnesses and sorrows, of unhealthy bodies and infirm minds, of broken relationships and shattered dreams. We all at times stagger under the weight of all we are made to bear upon our weak shoulders.

It is in such times that we turn to God for help, in such times that we call upon his precious promises to sustain and uplift us. Among the best of them is this: “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). When we are heavily burdened we are to take one specific action: cast. We are to throw or hurl or toss our burdens upon the Lord. We are to bring them to his attention and to plead with him for his help. And so we close our eyes and pray or we lift our eyes and cry out for his help, his assistance, his deliverance.
What we want, no doubt, is for God to take them from us. We want him to lift the cross from our shoulders, to clear the sorrow from our hearts, to take the pain from our bodies, to relieve the torment from our minds, to chase the enemies from our lives. We want him to take that burden and remove it as far as east is from west, as far as heaven is from earth, as far as Everest is from the depths of the Mariana Trench. But we need to check our expectations, for this is not the promise he makes.
God’s promise is not that he will take the burden from us, but that he will sustain us as we bear it. God’s promise is not that he will free us from what ails us—not yet, at least—, but that he will enable us to carry it for as long as he deems fit. God’s promise is not that he will remove that burden but that he will support us so that we have no need to fear that we will stumble or fall. With God’s support, we have no need to fear that we will undermine the work he intends to do or to fail to remain faithful to the end.
For the fact is that it may be that God has purposes to accomplish in us that require us to bear our burden a little bit longer or that he has purposes to accomplish through us that require us to bear our burden a lot longer. Much of the work God carries out in this world is work that takes us through pain, through sorrows, through persecution, through all manner of deep and dark valleys.
It may be good and right in God’s eyes that the infertility lasts much longer than you desire, hope, and pray. It may be according to his purposes that prayers for the salvation of your spouse or child may seem to go unanswered for many more years or decades. It may be consistent with his wisdom that healing does not come, that the cloud does not lift, that relief is still many months away. It may be that you will need to bear these things until the end. But either way, you can be absolutely certain that as you bear, God will sustain. He means to not only sustain you, but to actually bless and better you through your tenacious, faithful obedience—to generate endurance through your suffering, and character through your endurance, and hope through your character, as he increasingly conforms you to the image of his Son (Romans 5:3–5).

For many years there was a little potted plant on our kitchen window sill, though I’ve long since forgotten the variety. Year after year that plant would put out a shoot and from the shoot would emerge a single flower. And I observed that no matter how I turned the pot, the flower would respond. If I turned the pot so the flower was facing the room, within a day or two it would have turned to face the light. And if I rotated it again, the flower would respond in the same way, turning itself toward the light streaming in from the window. I could not fool it. I could not discourage it or persuade it to give up.
You cannot read about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ without noticing his love for the natural world. Many of his most vivid illustrations are drawn from nature—the birds, the plants, the trees, the winds. You often observe him making use of the natural elements that were right before him to help his listeners understand his teaching—the fig tree that failed to bear fruit, the fields that were white for harvest, the birds that were unconcerned about their next meal.
And in that vein, I learned a lesson from that little flower—the lesson of the potted plant. No matter how I turned the plant, it dutifully responded by realigning itself to face the light. No matter how many times I turned it and no matter how completely I turned it, it responded in the same way.
From the plant, I learned that life’s circumstances often turn us into times of darkness, times when we are overcome by pain, sorrow, or other trials. For a time the world around us may look dark and foreboding, like the Valley of the Shadow of Death is closing in around us and threatening to swallow us up. Yet our duty in such times is to look for the light and to turn toward it.
God never leaves us without some truth to believe in, some promise to cling to, some hope to long for, some light to turn toward.Share
And there always will be a source of light, for our God never deserts or abandons us. He never leaves us without some truth to believe in, some promise to cling to, some hope to long for, some light to turn toward. For God does not just have light or display light—he is light.
I’m certain that if I had taken my little potted plant to a dimly lit room in a hospital, it would still have turned toward whatever light came from the window, no matter how dim the source. I’m certain that if I took it to a prison cell with nothing but a single little window high above, it would lift its face toward that one shaft of light. It could not be stopped. It could not be discouraged. It could not be dissuaded.
And neither should we ever be dissuaded from turning toward the Lord in every circumstance. Our eyes may be weary and full of tears, the light may seem distant and dim, but the Lord is present, close to the broken-hearted and eager to save those who are crushed in spirit. It falls to us to simply turn and to look toward the light that streams from his presence and illumines us with his grace.