Sinclair Ferguson on Romans pt.1

I was first alerted to Dr. Sinclair Ferguson’s approach to reading the Bible through a post by Dr. Derek Thomas on the blog of Reformation 21. Dr. Thomas quotes a portion of Ferguson’s talk,

We ought not to read the Bible randomly, nor should one just read the Bible consecutively. It was reading something of Luther that helped me see this when he spoke of reading Romans as the ‘key’ to the Scriptures. I didn’t really know what that meant but I thought, if Romans is the key to the Scriptures, I need to get Romans into my soul. And so I remember going out and bought two commentaries on Romans. One was Robert Haldane’s commentary and the other was Professor (John) Murray’s… I gave myself unremittingly to trying to get Romans into my soul, not to master it so much as to be mastered by it. And to do the same with John’s Gospel, understanding that John’s Gospel in a sense very much functioned Christologically the same way that Romans functioned dogmatically, or didactically, or redemptive-historically; that there were whole streams of biblical revelation that were flowing here in a glorious confluence and that you could see them whole here. And looking back and I can see that I was a little bit like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter and I don’t know how diminished my ministry would have been if that principle had never dawned on me. And I am permanently grateful for having learned that.

I was immediately intrigued by his reading approach so I listened to the entirety of his talk at Reformed Theological Seminary. I was greatly blessed by hearing him talk, but regarding his reading method I was still left in the dark in how he approached his reading of Romans. I had the privilege asking him how he approached Romans.

Here is his very helpful and insightful reply:

At this distance I’m not sure I can recapture exactly whether I had a plan or not as to “how to” only that it was a “must do”! But my recollection is that i just worked through the books section by section, and “camped out” on certain passages that I felt were particularly important in the flow of the book. For example I have memories of spending a great deal of time on Romans 5:21-6:14 trying to grapple with the nature and significance of the Adam-Christ analogy and its implications both for the superabundance of grace and also for the light it shed then on the concepts used in 6:1ff about union with Christ in his death and resurrection. Then, since I was at the time a philosophy student, Romans 1:18ff was a passage that addressed some of the basic issues that were being brought before me in a year long class I had in philosophy of religion. So it really was a combination of struggling with the concepts on the one hand and finding that life situations both alerted me to the importance of what was being said and therefore helped me probe the text a little more, and at the same time helped me to bring the thoughts of man to the bar of the thoughts of God.

In other words, the necessity of having the contents of Romans engraved into our souls is what drives us to get into the Epistle of Romans. The beating of our heart to know God compels us to be in this book. In our pursuit of Him we dig in, go deep, linger long, and pray fervently in order to know Him. Affections must precede the method; our method flows out of our hungering and thirsting for Him. Ferguson is right, Romans is a “must do!”

There will be one more post regarding Ferguson’s reading the Scripture through Romans.