The Purest Gospel

Luther called Romans “the very purest Gospel.” It is also, for many, the hardest book in the New Testament to read alone.

The Purest Gospel is a confessional Lutheran exposition of Paul’s greatest letter, written for thoughtful laypeople, teachers, and pastors who want Romans opened rather than explained away. Across fourteen unhurried expositions it walks the whole of Romans — from the thesis that once terrified Martin Luther and then became, in his words, “a gate to heaven,” to the closing doxology — glossing every word of Greek and assuming no training but a willing mind.

Nine extended excursuses take up the questions the text provokes and the scholars still argue over: the “works of the law” and the New Perspective on Paul; the righteousness of God, justification, and imputation; the faith of Christ, or faith in Christ; Holy Baptism and the new life; the identity of the “wretched man” of Romans 7; election, and the asymmetry of mercy; the means of grace, against every form of enthusiasm; vocation and the priesthood of all believers; and the doctrine of the two kingdoms.

Throughout, the book reads Romans the way the Reformation learned to read it — by the distinction between Law and Gospel, the word that accuses and the word that gives. It engages modern scholarship fairly and answers it plainly: confessional without being cold, warm without drifting into mere feeling. And it is, above all, pastoral — written for the conscience, returning always to the gift Luther found in this letter: a righteousness not our own, received by faith, that opens the gate of heaven.

For pastors, adult Bible-study and Sunday-school teachers, and every Christian who has longed to see Romans whole.