Category: Romans

Take a moment to read Romans 1:1-17 before reading the devotional below.

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Before we start exploring Paul’s letter to the church in Rome over the next month or so, take time to read about its background and history. This letter is not storytelling, but rather makes some important points about what it means to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and to follow him. We will be asking a lot of questions during this series, rather than describing events.

Paul begins his theological framework by fitting Jesus into the bigger story that God had been working out with his Jewish people for thousands of years. He makes the connection with David’s family line, from which the Messiah would come. He affirms the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, a key point for understanding the rest of his argument. Paul is also affirming that Jesus came not just for Jews, but for “Gentiles” (all non-Jewish people). These are big shifts in thinking for religious Jews who had taken the Scriptures and created some preconceived ideas of what the Messiah would be like. But Paul declares that he is not ashamed to tell everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, that Jesus is the Messiah and he came to save the world.

Here’s your freedom for today: faith is the key to freedom. Do you believe God has power? Do you believe that he demonstrated that power through Jesus on earth? Do you believe he is active in the world and in our lives today through his Holy Spirit? Do you believe God is willing and able to transform you? All of these questions take faith to believe, but faith is not a mere list of check-boxes that makeup a religious worldview. Instead, faith takes action on these beliefs — following a calling of God on your life, sacrificing personal comfort for spiritual growth, praying for and expecting miracles. When you have faith that Jesus is the Son of God and the hope of the world, you can’t just live a run-of-the-mill life. Faith brings freedom to live beyond what this world can offer. Just a tiny little bit can change everything.

 

Take a moment to read Romans 1:18-32 before reading the devotional below.

As we read Romans, it is important to remember that Paul is building a cohesive theological argument. We are breaking the reading up into smaller sections, but we cannot rip them out of their context. You may want to go back each day and review the previous day’s devotional in order to keep the flow continuous in your mind. Recall that Paul already has made the basic case that Jesus is the Messiah and he fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures. Our main point yesterday was that faith is the key to freedom — and today we see what happens when we do not put our faith in God.

God’s presence has been made apparent to everyone. I don’t know a person who is not amazed by a beautiful sunset or the vastness of the ocean. Obviously people attribute those natural phenomena to a variety of causes, but here Paul is saying that God’s presence is abundantly clear. We have an innate hunger for God, but sometimes we replace God with other things like idols or our own desires. When we want to go our own way, God lets us, and we are pretty creative when it comes to finding ways to sin. We bicker with our loved ones, we disobey our parents, we hate and judge people, and we break our promises. No matter what you’ve struggled with in your flesh, it’s in this list. And of course the very first thing we are tempted to do with this passage is point to all the people doing all the stuff we’ve never even thought about and say how horrible they must be.

Here’s your freedom for today: you don’t have to do God’s job. Evaluating the hearts of people is God’s job, not mine or yours. We do not need to cherry pick the Bible to find verses that make us out to be the “good guys” and others the bad ones. The point of this section of the letter to the Romans is that every single one of us finds a way to be depraved without God. If it hasn’t been done yet, we’ll make up new ways to turn from him. We can’t make any conclusions about this yet because Paul is just getting started in establishing the foundations of his argument. As we go along in the coming days and weeks, we’ll need to keep asking ourselves why. Why is he writing this? Why did God want to reveal this to us through this letter? What is the main point and what does it mean for my own spiritual growth? Keep your eyes on you through that process so that you can go deeper with God.

Take a moment to read Romans 2:1-16 before reading the devotional below.

Yesterday we landed on the idea that it is not our place to judge the sin of others, but rather to look inward at our own sin. Paul builds on that idea as he continues his letter, saying rather boldly in verse 1: “When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.” Why would we accept God’s grace for our own sin while not extending that same grace to others? 

Paul then sets up a major point that he will deconstruct as we continue in the coming chapters. He has established that none of us are exempt from the clutches of sin, and here he is reminding us that if you want to live by a performance-based system you are going to be in pretty big trouble. God destroys the wicked. All of us are wicked. This is where we should begin to realize that there is no way we can save ourselves. The Jewish people were given God’s law, so they know what to do and ought to be doing the right thing. The Gentiles did not receive that law, but we all have a conscience. You don’t need to read the Old Testament to know when you are doing the wrong thing.

Here’s your freedom for today: you can give up trying to save yourself or the world. God is going to judge the world, through Jesus, peering into everyone’s secret life. What immediately pops into your mind when you hear that word: secret? The thoughts you’ve had, the things you’ve done that you plan to go to your grave with. It all gets unearthed. Perhaps by now the term “good news” is making more sense. Paul’s letter doesn’t end here, and that’s great news. We’ll see where he goes next, but for now, just know that any attempt to save yourself by being “good enough” will not work. You are off the savior-hook and the judge-the-world hook. Let God be God and we’ll find out soon just what that means for how to live your life.

Take a moment to read Romans 2:17-29 before reading the devotional below.

The book of Romans was written to the growing early church in Rome, which was comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. In this letter, Paul at times directly speaks to Jews and at other times to Gentiles. Each group has specific faith-hurdles they need to overcome in order to understand what it means to follow Jesus. In today’s passage, we see that he has begun his theological argument with Jews in mind. He directly addresses them here, talking about this “special relationship” with God that they have had for all of history thus far. Indeed, the Old Testament makes it clear that God made a promise to Abraham and he made good on this promise by selecting the Jewish people as his special nation. They were meant to be a light to the nations around them, which sometimes happened and sometimes did not.

Paul is going after the spiritual pride of the Jewish people. If God has already chosen us, then we’re in the insiders’ club, right? Some American Christians think this way today — we forget that the outward appearance does not matter to God one little bit. If you go through a bunch of rituals or ceremonies but you are not actually doing the things God wants for you, what good is it? There is only one thing God is actually trying to accomplish in giving us the Bible and instructing us through it: a changed heart.

Here’s your freedom for today: the Holy Spirit transforms you. Somehow we continue to manage to make our Christian life all about performance, just like the Jewish Christians did in Rome. If I look the part, if I pray with the right words, if I go through the spiritual rites of passage… Yet your heart is what God is after. Your heart is a very protected space and you decide who you let in. Probably there are only a handful of people (or less) on this entire planet who truly know the contents of your heart. And even fewer (or none) know the things you are not too proud of that reside in there. When we ask Jesus to forgive our sins and lead our lives, the Holy Spirit moves right into your heart. The process of change can be gradual, but the transformation work begins. He will keep kneading you like a piece of dough, pressing and shaping and maybe even tossing into the air in the wilder moments of life. He’s forming you and transforming you as much as you let him. When you let go of what everyone else is thinking and focus on the Spirit’s work, that’s when your heart and God’s begin to align.

Take a moment to read Romans 3:1-20 before reading the devotional below.

So far in this letter Paul has said that we all sin in all kinds of ways, that we can’t judge other people’s sins because ours are just as bad, and that Jewish people cannot assume that they have special privilege with God simply because he chose them for a purpose. We learn more about that purpose today as Paul asks, “What good is being Jewish if we don’t have a special standing with God? Did something change?” His answer: God wanted to tell the whole world something through the Jewish people. God wanted everyone to see that his law (that we could title “How to Be Perfect”) was impossible for humans to keep, even when they knew all the right answers.

Paul makes the case that God has not abandoned his special people, but rather he was faithful to carry out his plan through them and bring the long-awaited Messiah. He quotes multiple Psalms, reminding his Jewish readers that God has been saying the same thing the whole time. No one can ever be perfect, even when they are told exactly what to do.

Here’s your freedom for today: you are no better or worse off than anyone else. We all stand before God in about the same spot: missing the mark. If you are playing darts with a bunch of friends and you all miss the target completely, it really doesn’t matter which of you was more off than the others. You didn’t get any points and you certainly weren’t even close to a bulls-eye. The amazing news is that God doesn’t not demand that we hit a spiritual or moral bulls-eye to be in relationship with him or participate in his kingdom. He knows we can’t do it. He needed to prove to us (through the Jewish people) that no one could do it no matter how many times they tried. Together they couldn’t. Individually they couldn’t. So Jesus did. We’ll see more about that in the coming days…