The Roman Road:

The Roman Road:
The Plan of Salvation

5. Romans 3:23

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. —Romans 3:23

Our first four verses (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1, 14, and 3:16) give us the bare bones of biblical truth. The next five provide a comprehensive outline for God’s plan of salvation.
The Bible is a big book—sixty-six divisions and more than thirty-one thousand verses—so the Lord placed a summary of it in the Scriptures, a digest, an abridgement, a prospectus. It’s called the book of Romans, and it’s a synopsis of the message of the entire Bible. Within Romans is a series of verses that give us an outline of God’s entire plan of salvation for the human race. These verses are often called the Roman Road—Romans 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; and 10:9-10, and 13.

I don’t know who first put these verses together and called them the Roman Road, but I know when I first became acquainted with them. I was a boy growing up in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and an evangelist came to hold a revival. I don’t recall his name. He had a stamp and ink pad, and everywhere he went he stamped the Roman Road in the front of people’s Bibles. I remember taking my Bible up to him after one of the services, and he pressed his stamp into the ink pad and then carefully transferred the verses to my Bible. As I recall, the stamp just said, “The Roman Road,” and it listed the references for these verses.

In the years since, I’ve learned many methods of leading someone to Christ, but I find that I keep going back to this old series of verses because they summarize everything we need to tell others about how to receive Christ as Savior.
The first stop on this road is Romans 3:23. We have all sinned and fallen short of the perfect standards and holy expectations of the God of all glory. We are separated from Him by our sins. Before the good news of salvation, we have to know the bad news of sin.

Only three people in the history of the world have been perfect and sinless, and the first two didn’t stay that way—Adam and Eve. That leaves only Jesus Himself. No one else can ever gain access into God’s presence or eternal life on the basis of one’s own perfections or righteous efforts. We have all sinned and have fallen short of the requirements of God’s glory. We can never be reconciled to God by trying to live a good life, for we are intrinsically, internally sinful; and nothing sinful can exist in the blazing holiness of God’s presence and perfections. Only when we realize this can we fully appreciate what Christ has done for us.

We can love our own, and also the good and the gracious; but God loves the ungodly, the worst of sinners and the most bitter blasphemers. Our part is to accept that love in His Son, our Savior. —V. Raymond Edman

6. Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 6:23

With the possible exception of John 3:16, no other text in Scripture better sums up all sixty-six books and thirty-one thousand verses of the Bible. This is the ultimate Reader’s Digest version of God’s Word. Notice the way the verse is balanced between its two clauses:

The wages of sin is death.
The gift of God is eternal life.

If we pull out the primary words of Romans 6:23 and place them side by side, we can see its logic and contrasting argument:

Wages—Gift
Sin—God
Death—Eternal Life

Wages is a word we see in our newspaper every day. It’s what we get for what we do. The Bible says that we’re all employed by sin, and the result or payback is physical, spiritual, and eternal death. In contrast to that, God wants to give us a gift, which is everlasting life.
It’s a gift that only comes wrapped in one package—Jesus Christ our Lord! Think of a great canyon. We’re on one side in a state of sin and death; God is on the other side with the gift of eternal life. The cross of Jesus Christ is the only bridge that spans the chasm. As 1 Timothy 2:5 says in The Living Bible: “God is on one side and all the people on the other side, and Christ Jesus, himself a man, is between them to bring them together.”

When I preach, I sometimes turn to various passages, moving from one to the other in logical order. Using a pencil, I’ll jot the next reference beside the prior one. In that way, if I forget which verse comes next, I have a reminder. We can do the same with the Roman Road. Beside Romans 3:23, pencil in the margin 6:23. Beside 6:23, pencil in 5:8; and beside that verse put 9:9-10. If you do this in a small, pocket-sized New Testament that you carry with you, you’ll always be ready to lead someone to the facts they need to find eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Memory Tip

Write the references of the Roman Road in the front of your Bible, repeat the verses frequently, practice them on a buddy, and then ask God to bring someone across your path with whom you can share this simple, effective route to salvation in Christ:

The Roman Road

Romans 3:23 • Romans 6:23 • Romans 5:8 • Romans 10:9-10, 13

The Roman Road: This is one of the most effective presentations for people who’ve heard the message but need to see it in black and white, right out of the pages of the Bible. It’s based on... verses in the book of Romans. I’d suggest highlighting these in your Bible so that they’re easy to find and show to others. —Bill Hybels

7. Romans 5:8

But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us! —Romans 5:8

When Charles Evans Hughes, America’s secretary of state in the 1920s, attended an important meeting of the Pan-American Conference, he gave his interpreter an unusual request. He wanted a summarized translation of what was being spoken in Spanish or Portuguese, but he added, “I want you to give me every word after the speaker says but.”
The word but is a conjunction that implies a sudden change of direction in the thought. And when we see this word in the Bible, it’s important to understand every word that follows it, especially if the phrase is but God...!

• But God said, “No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son.” (Gen. 17:19)
• It was not you who sent me here, but God. (Gen. 45:8)
• I am about to die, but God... (Gen. 50:24)
• Do not be afraid or discouraged,... the battle is not yours, but God’s. (2 Chron. 20:15)
• But God was watching over the Jewish elders. (Ezra 5:5)
• But our God turned the curse into a blessing. (Neh. 13:2)
• But God will redeem my life from the power of Sheol. (Ps. 49:15)
• My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever. (Ps. 73:26)
• But God was with him. (Acts 7:9)
• But God raised Him from the dead. (Acts 13:30)
• But God gave the growth. (1 Cor. 3:6)
• But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us. (2 Cor. 7:6)
• But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. (Eph. 2:4-5)

Romans 5:8 is perhaps the greatest of all the “But God” statements in the Bible: But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us!

Memory Tip

If we read and study a verse in its context, we can more easily memorize a verse and its reference. This verse is found in the middle of the paragraph in Romans 5 that runs from verse 6 to verse 11. The whole paragraph is worth memorizing, for it contains some of the richest verses in the Bible about the willingness of Jesus Christ to offer Himself for our sins. Read this paragraph repeatedly to understand the context for verse 8, and memorizing it will come much more naturally.

“Christ died for us.” Here is a simple sentence in four words. The first two words state a historical fact: ‘Christ died.’ The second two add the theological significance: ‘for us.’ The full four form the crux of the Gospel: ‘Christ died for us.’ Never did four short words hold bigger or better message. —J. Sidlow Baxter

8. Romans 10:9

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. —Romans 10:9

As a boy, I heard my dad talk about a favorite preacher of his, a man named Hyman Appelman. Recently I came across a biography of Dr. Appelman and discovered he was born into a Russian Jewish family in 1902. When he was twelve, his family immigrated to America and settled in Chicago where Appelman grew up to become a hardworking attorney. In 1924, Appelman, suffering from a physical breakdown, traveled west to recover and checked into the downtown YMCA in Kansas City. There he met a newspaper reporter who witnessed to him about Jesus Christ. Later he began reading a Bible he found in his room.

Traveling to Denver, Appelman met other Christians, including a local pastor who told him, “You don’t need a doctor, my boy; you need the Lord Jesus Christ!” The pastor opened a Bible to Romans 10:9 and explained the verse as carefully as he knew how. Appelman, 23, prayed and claimed this text as his own. But when he sent a telegram to tell his family what he’d done, they were horrified. His fiancée broke the engagement, and Appelman was an outcast from his friends. He persevered through difficult days and went on to become one of the greatest evangelists of his era. Hundreds of thousands of people confessed Christ in his meetings, and he often referred to himself as “a little Jew with a big Jesus.”
The phrase “Jesus is Lord” was the New Testament confession of faith. It is the acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is God Himself and that we are making Him the Lord of our lives. This is our declaration when we decide to believe and receive the truth of the risen Christ. If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Memory Tip

We can’t memorize everything, and there’s no reason to learn useless information. We must be intentional about what we memorize. In her book Total Recall, Joan Minninger says, “Scientists estimate that we remember only 1 out of every 100 pieces (of information) we receive. If we remembered everything, they say, we would be ‘paralyzed by information overload.’ A good memory must be selective.” As intentional memorizers, let’s select key Scriptures and deliberately inscribe them on the walls of our brains.

The remedy is not only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ preached in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit. It is the gospel preached ceaselessly, endlessly, the gospel planted beside all waters, the gospel pressed andimpressed upon the hearts of the multitudes. —Hyman Appelman

9. Romans 10:10

With the heart one believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses, resulting in salvation. —Romans 10:10

In his book Scripture Memory for Successful Soul-Winning, Oscar Lowry confesses that when he began training for Christian ministry, he had an undisciplined mind. He didn’t believe he could memorize verses so he filled the flyleaf of his Bible with references helpful for counseling. When talking with others, he’d turn to the front of his Bible, find a suitable passage, then look it up, and read it. This was a workable plan but not the best one.
Lowry finally determined, “If I can memorize one verse, then I can memorize one more, and ten more, and even one hundred.” Rising early the next morning, he chose Romans 10:9-10, even though it seemed to him like a difficult place to start. He paced across his room, repeating these verses, muttering them over, trying to hammer them into his head.

 “I will do this thing,” he told himself, and within a half hour he had the verses memorized.
The next morning he reviewed Romans 10:9-10, then memorized another verse. He kept adding a new verse every morning while diligently reviewing the prior ones. Months later it dawned on him he could repeat a hundred verses without looking at his Bible, and that the work was becoming easier as his brain adjusted to its new patterns of memorization.
By the time of his death, Lowry had learned more than twenty thousand verses, about two-thirds of the Bible, and could locate each with chapter and verse. It all began with Romans 10:9-10.

In memorizing Romans 10:9-10, notice that both verses speak of twin actions that enable us to claim salvation. We believe with our hearts and confess with our mouths. But the order is reversed in the two verses. Verse 9 tells us to confess with our mouth and to believe in our hearts. Verse 10 explains that we believe with our hearts and confess with our mouths. That’s not a contradiction; it’s a mirror image of the process. Quote verse 9, and then learn verse 10 as if looking at verse 9 in a mirror. Scholars call this an A-B-B-A format. Verse 9 gives us the order from the outside in, and verse 10 gives us the order from the inside out. The two actions happen at once as we believe in our hearts that Jesus has risen from the dead; therefore we acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. Add verse 13, and you’ve mastered the entire “Roman Road.”

It takes only a few brief words to enter the married life; but it will take thousands of confessions of love through word and act to live the married life. We enter the Christian life by faith in Christ and by confessing Him as Lord and Master of our lives; but it takes all the remaining days of our lives, our confessions of Him as Lord by our words and by the deeds of our lives, to live the Christian life. —A. B. Kendall

  * 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart.