Who could sit down and read through Romans and understand it?

Doesn’t that bother us?  Why don’t we try more often?

But when we break up the text into sermons, we can evade the problem.  Our need to jump around what is supposed to be an extended argument, as if it were a series of short topical statements, is hidden by the form.

But Romans is meant to be an argument.  It ought to be better understood as a whole.