ANNOUNCER: Is the Roman’s road a legitimate way to evangelize unbelievers? What are some of the pitfalls of this approach? That’s what we’ll talk about today. Glad you’ve joined us, friend. This is Grace in Focus. Grace in Focus is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our offices are in North Texas and our website is faithalone.org. We have our national annual conference coming up soon. We’ve been talking about this. The dates are May 18th through the 21st. It will be at Camp Copass in North Texas, a beautiful place with lots of wonderful people. So use that website to get all the details you need to get signed up. It’s faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates. 

KEN: I’m Ken Yates and I’m sitting here with Bob Wilkin. My boss. And we are going through some of the, what we hope to be, our plenary sessions, our main sessions in the upcoming Grace Evangelical Society conference that’s going to be held May 18th through 21st here in North Texas. And one of the sessions that we’re hoping to have at this conference is answering the question, is the Roman road a legitimate way to use the book of Romans to evangelize unbelievers? 

BOB: Okay. Now, there are a lot of tracts that use this approach, right, and a lot of people suggest this. So the Romans road, I wrote an article on it and which I said, the Romans road ends in a cul-de-sac. In other words, if you’re in the semi-trailer, you’re not going to be able to get out because you get stuck in there. But you might go to faithalone.org and you can read it. But what I found, I looked at a lot of tracts and I put those in that article. And what I showed is that I think there’s only one or two that completely sticks with Romans. Most of the Romans road approach use three or four or five verses from Romans, but then they’ll throw in a verse from, let’s say, the Gospel of John or they may throw in a verse from the gospels or they may throw in an Old Testament text. So they throw in some other verses. But where they’re headed with the Romans road approach is Romans 10:9-10, right? 

KEN: Right. And they usually start off, in my experience, is Roman 3:23, right? 

BOB: What is that? 

KEN: Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And it’s usually presented like this: we’re all sinners and we’re going to go to hell. I mean, that’s basically what they say, right? Well, for all have sinned and our sin is going to send us to the lake of fire. 

BOB: However, my experience has been when people do this, it goes more like this, for you have sinned and you have fallen short of the glory of God. But if you read Romans 3;23, he’s talking about all, right? 

KEN: Everybody. 

BOB: Including Paul himself? In other words, everybody has sinned in the past and falls short of the glory of God. That’s present. 

KEN: Present tense, so we all fall short of the glory of God. 

BOB: So if I share that verse, well I do share it, but when I typically don’t share it in evangelism, because the point is, Jesus has already taken away the sin barrier. So I don’t really need to get into this from an evangelistic, this is a sanctification issue. But still, when Paul’s bringing that up, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, I think his point is that the moralist can’t claim that he’s going to have eternal life based on his works, right? 

KEN: Right. Or that he is going to escape the wrath of God. Because we all fall short, both living like I am. I deserve the wrath of God. How do I avoid it? 

BOB: And the way you avoid it, first of all, you’re justified. But then secondly, you’re sanctified. You have to live the Romans 5 through 8 experience. As we said in the last one, 4:25 through the end of chapter 8. And if you do, then you’ll escape God’s wrath.

KEN: And then it goes in the Romans road, normally—and to me, this was a key, Bob. When I was first exposed to this, I said, boy, this makes some other sense, because the next verse on the Roman road that’s often used, if you look at gospel tracts is Romans 6:23. But stop right there. Romans 6 is right in the middle of Paul’s discussion on Christian living. So why are we using this as an evangelistic verse for unbelievers?

BOB: Okay. So here, let’s read Romans 6:23 and then maybe we can talk about it.

KEN: Right. Roman 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” So they read these verses, the wages of sin is death. And evangelicalism across the board says, okay, the wages of sin is death. That’s talking about the lake of fire. You know, the lake of fire, I’m going to go to hell. 

BOB; But that’s not what it says. 

KEN: Exactly. 

BOB: And the wages of sin is physical death. And the reason why Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates are going to die if the rapture doesn’t occur first is because of sin. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he plunged himself and the entire human race into mortality. Remember, the Lord told him in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. Well, he didn’t physically drop dead at that moment, but he did become mortal at that moment. 

KEN: He will die. 

BOB: And from a Jewish perspective, he started dying. Let’s say a person gets shot and they’re in critical condition and three days later, they die. Well, it would be fair to say that them being shot killed him. Even though it took three days, well, him eating that fruit killed him. 

KEN: The second you got shot, you’re going to die. 

BOB: And the second he ate that fruit, he was going to die. 

KEN: He was going to die. 

BOB: He started dying and he became mortal. 

ANNOUNCER: It’s coming, it’ll be here before you know it. What am I talking about? The Grace Evangelical Society’s National Conference 2026, May 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass, an absolutely beautiful campground in North Texas right on the lake with lots of recreation, great food, a great place to stay, wonderful fellowship, and wonderful Free Grace Bible teaching. Information and online registration now at faithalone.org/events. First timers waive registration fees. Faithalone.org/events.

BOB: And we all die because we’re his offspring. We are mortal. And so we die. And so “the wages of sin is death” means that because we sin, we die. 

KEN: And let me just say, I mentioned it just a minute ago about this was, I think probably the key verse for me to understand that the Roman road, we need to get off the Roman road as an evangelistic thing because, like I said, in Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8, he’s talking about Christian living. And twice in chapter 6, Paul says, “Should we continue in sin,”

BOB: Yeah, “that grace may abound? No, may it never be!” 

KEN: Right. And he’s talking to believers, should we as believers continue to sin because we’re no longer under the law or because we’re under grace? And the answer is no. Well, why? Because sin produces death, or we would say in the book of Romans, it produces the wrath of God in our lives. 

BOB: Okay, so then why does he say, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord?” Why mention eternal life? 

KEN: Well, we’ve been given eternal life, and it is, we’ve been given it freely, but now we can walk in it. 

BOB: Okay, so in other words, according to this view, there is a contrast between death and life. The wages of sin is physical death, but the gift of God is eternal life. But I think when Zane Hodges in his commentary talks about that, he more or less said what you just said. 

Here’s what Hodges says, “But eternal life is an unearned experience because at its core, eternal life is the gift of God that is given in Christ Jesus, our Lord. When we produce holiness, we are living out the gift that God gave us when we were justified by faith.” And he goes on to say, “The whole gracious bestowal can be described as justification, sourced in life.” And he says, “See 5:18,” and he says, “The closing words of verse 23 in Christ Jesus, our Lord, are identical to the words that close verse 11.” And he says,”The repeated words serve to emphasize the truth that the eternal life which is given to us as a gift is our possession in union with the Savior in whom we died and in whom we have been raised to walk in God’s paths.” 

So what Hodges is seeing in Romans 6:23 is a call to live in this eternal life experience.

KEN: That he is given us. 

BOB: He’s given us this life and we need to live in it. 

KEN: Yes, so we can either walk in life or walk in death. That’s the option, but he’s talking to believers. 

BOB: Or another way you could say walk in light or walk in darkness. 

KEN: Sure, and he’s not talking, nowhere in chapter 6 is he talking about unbelievers. 

BOB: Right. This is not an evangelistic verse in Romans. 

KEN: And I would just say that anybody who goes to the Romans road, because there are so many are going to insist upon it, because of the gospel tracts, I would say to do what I did. Look at this Romans chapter 6 and say, how can we be using these verses in an evangelistic way when Paul’s not using it that way? 

BOB: Exactly. And it gets worse when we get to Romans 10:9-10. Because when we get to Romans 10:9-10, what people say is it’s not enough to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You’ve got to both believe and confess him. And they say the belief is internal and the confession is external. Maybe you could read that. 

KEN: Okay, which verses do you want to read in Romans 10? Okay, in Romans chapter 10:9-10 it says, and this is another verse that you’ll see in these gospel tracts, part of the Roman road. He says in Romans 10:9, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” 

BOB: Yeah, now, I mean, this is what Billy Graham and other evangelists used a lot. Remember they would say the buses will wait. You need to come down and confess Christ. 

KEN: And I said that I was in a Sunday school class just recently and they said you’ve got to confess Jesus as Lord in order to make it into the kingdom. And they said believing is not enough and they used these verses. 

BOB: Okay, so because this is such a big deal, I think we’re going to have to carry this over into the next one and specifically talk more about Romans 10:9-10, but let me make this point clearly—whatever Romans 10:9-10 is saying, it’s not saying that believing in Jesus for eternal life is not enough. It’s not saying you’ve got to also confess Him publicly or you’ve also got to be baptized, which a lot of people say this is referring to baptism because that’s where we confess Him publicly or some people will say that’s where you go forward in an evangelistic meeting or at a church meeting or at an evangelistic crusade, that’s not what Romans 10:9-10 are saying. So we’ll take a look at that in the next session. 

KEN: Yeah, but the main point here is that these verses are used as a Roman road for evangelism. What we’re saying and what we’re going to say in the conference is get off of that road. No, don’t use these verses to tell the unbeliever how to go to heaven by confessing Jesus. 

BOB: All right, in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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Now, friend, we love it that you’ve joined us all this week on Grace in Focus. We hope you have a great weekend. Come back and join us again on Monday for more Grace in Focus.