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Biblical Theme Map

Biblical Theme Map

Romans develops a small number of major themes across its sixteen chapters. Mapping where each theme appears helps keep terminology consistent across a curriculum that will be taught and translated lesson by lesson rather than as one continuous document.

Theme progression

  1. Universal need (1:18-3:20) — every person, Jew and Gentile alike, stands guilty before God, against the grain of Islamic fitrah (innate purity) doctrine. Key terms: sin (الخطية), universal accountability (المسؤولية الإنسانية الشاملة).
  2. Justification by faith (3:21-4:25) — righteousness credited through faith, grounded in Abraham, not achieved through the deeds-checklist sense of البر. Key terms: righteousness (البر), justification (التبرير), grace (النعمة), faith (الإيمان).
  3. New life in Christ (5:1-8:39) — peace with God, adoption with full inheritance (against the Quran’s restriction on adoption), assurance of salvation (against the mizan’s uncertain outcome). Key terms: peace (السلام), sanctification (التقديس), adoption (التبني), Abba (أبّا).
  4. Israel and the nations (9:1-11:36) — God’s faithfulness to his promises, requiring deliberate framing given the contemporary political weight of “Israel” in Arabic. Key terms: election (اختيار الله), covenant (العهد), unity of Jew and Gentile.
  5. Transformed living (12:1-15:13) — practical outworking of the gospel in the church and society, against tribal and sectarian identity markers. Key terms: church (الكنيسة), spiritual gifts (المواهب الروحية), kingdom of God (ملكوت الله).
  6. Closing and mission (15:14-16:27) — Paul’s mission to the nations, with awareness of real safety stakes for evangelism in the surrounding culture. Key terms: mission (الإرسالية), fellowship (الشركة).

Use in this curriculum

Each lesson in the Romans curriculum should be tagged with which theme-block it falls under, so terminology introduced in an earlier block (e.g. “justification” in block 2) is reinforced rather than re-explained from scratch when it recurs in a later block (e.g. block 3’s “assurance of salvation”).