Tag: Sin

Digging in Deeper: Romans 3:9-18

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“What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews  and Greeks are all under sin, as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The Gospel is good news. But before it’s good news, it’s hard news. In our journey through Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, we are almost to where the great apostle starts to unpack the good news. For the last few weeks, though, it’s pretty much been all hard news. We’ve got two last stops to make on Paul’s journey through the hard news. The next one is a kind of summary that offers a final setup to the good news. This one, though, is where Paul finally lands with both feet on the hard news and doesn’t hold back. Brace yourself. This one is tough.

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Morning Musing: Romans 3:5-6

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“But if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what are we to say? I am using a human argument: Is God unrighteous to inflict wrath? Absolutely not! Otherwise, how will God judge the world?” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The picture of God as judge is not a popular one nowadays. This wasn’t always the case. The pre-modern world didn’t have much of a problem with it at all. Our being repulsed by the idea is a consequence of modern and postmodern philosophical movements over the last roughly 200 years changing the way we think about ourselves and right and wrong and God more generally. As we work through Paul’s concluding argument in his grand presentation of the hard news of the Gospel in order to set up the good news (which we’ll finally get to next week), he starts things off by highlighting some potential reactions to the argument he has been making. We dealt with the first of these last week. Let’s take on the second today: Is God right to issue judgment against sin?

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 1:28-32

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***An extra post today. I was doing some cleaning up on the back end of the blog, and accidentally deleted this post from a few weeks ago. My meticulousness wouldn’t let me leave out this one passage from the series. Good thing I saved it in another place as well. Happy Monday.***

“And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know God’s just sentence — that those who practice such things deserve to die  — they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Worldview is everything. Belief dictates behavior. Worldview determines belief. Therefore, worldview lies at the heart of every single decision we make, every action we take, every word we speak, even every thought we think. Because of this, having the right worldview is a really big deal. All worldviews, you see, are not created equal. Now, some borrow ideas from other worldviews because their own worldview produces ideas that address not very good. But idea borrowing like this can be an indication of a flawed worldview. Choosing a worldview known to be flawed is a moral decision. It is a moral decision that will be judged appropriately. As Paul wraps up his opening condemnation of sin in light of the Gospel, these ideas are present in his thinking. Let’s explore them.

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Morning Musing: Romans 1:24-25

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“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Thanks to a few hundred years’ worth of pop culture, when we think about the judgment of God, we imagine fire and brimstone. We picture great floods and earthquakes. We imagine something dramatic and terrible. We imagine God’s actively doing something to punish us for our sins (or, better yet, them for theirs…we usually give ourselves a pass). Yet so much of the judgment we encounter in the Scriptures doesn’t look like that at all. Instead, it takes the form of God simply stepping back and letting the consequences of our sin play themselves out naturally. Paul describes something like that here. Check this out with me.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 32:25-29

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“Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control, making them a laughingstock to their enemies. And Moses stood at the camp’s entrance and said, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.’ And all the Levites gathered around him. He told them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, “Every man fasten his sword to his side; go back and forth through the camp from entrance to entrance, and each of you kill his brother, his friend, and his neighbor.”‘ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand men fell dead that day among the people. Afterward Moses said, ‘Today you have been dedicated to the Lord, since each man went against his son and his brother. Therefore you have brought a blessing on yourselves today.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When we were growing up we had a dog named Ginger. She was the reddest golden retriever I’ve ever seen, and she was the best dog in the world. When she was a puppy, she would get so excited when my dad got home from work that she would pee on the floor. If a person did something like that, we’d say they got out of control. When people get out of control, sometimes it takes extreme measures to get their attention again. The people of Israel who joined in the worship of the golden calf got out of control and had to be stopped. This next part of the story is hard. Really hard. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

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