Today’s Reading: Romans 1:18 – 2:16

Paul starts out his letter to the Romans saying – You belong to Jesus! You are loved by God and are called to be his own holy people – set apart and consecrated for His purposes. Your identity isn’t about who YOU are but about who HE is. Your purpose in life isn’t about YOU but about HIM. So, when He makes YOU right, it’s not about how right YOU are but about how right HE is. This, however, is not an excuse to intentionally sin in hopes that HIS righteousness will cover us.

Romans is one of my favorite books of the bible to study. If you consistently follow this blog, I hope that you remember this core truth that Paul weaves through all of his writings — that we are made right with God by faith, and this relationship with God frees us from the power of sin. It is important for us to distinguish the difference between unrighteousness, self-righteousness, and God’s righteousness. Understanding these concepts gives us a new lens through which we grasp the salvation of God. Let’s look first at unrighteousness.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. — Romans 1:18-19

Paul described the unrighteous as those who know that what they are doing is wrong, yet they do it anyhow. He was not talking about those who have never heard the gospel, but about those who abandon God to do their own thing. God gives them the freedom to make that decision and allows them to walk away from Him and into the life they choose with its painful consequences (1:18-32).

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks…So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. — Romans 1:21,24

When Paul speaks of the unrighteous in his letter to the Romans, he is speaking of those who have allowed themselves to wander away from the truth. They began thinking up foolish ideas of what God was like, and their minds became dark and confused. They traded the truth about God for a lie. And from the arrogance of their foolish thinking comes a long list of unrighteous behaviors that begin creeping into their lives, including homosexuality (1:26-27).

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, mailicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. — Romans 1:28-32

Paul goes on to warn the church not to judge the unrighteous too quickly, but to see the ways in which we also deny the sovereignty of God when we do what we want to do instead of what God calls us to do. We may not blatantly walk away from God, but we still choose to do and say what we want instead of submitting to God’s ways and His Spirit. We allow foolish thinking to make its way into the church and are slowly pulled away from the truths found in scripture, giving ourselves permission to start seeing sin as acceptable. Christians start looking like everyone else in town except that they have this additional social circle known as the church. Jesus did not die on a cross to save us from our sins so that we could keep on intentionally sinning – He called us to a much higher purpose! You belong to Jesus! You are loved by God and are called to be his own holy people – set apart and consecrated for His purposes.

But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. – Romans 2:5-8

Yesterday we talked about how when God makes YOU right, it’s not about how right YOU are but about how right HE is. In the same way, it’s not about how wrong I have been but about the perfect blood of Jesus shed on a cross for my sins. I can never be good enough to earn my salvation, and I can never wander so far from God that His forgiveness is no longer available to me if only I will repent and allow Him to sanctify me.

Father God, please reveal to us any foolish thinking we have allowed to creep into our theology. May your truth be written on our hearts, and may your Spirit reveal any sin in our lives. Forgive us for our arrogance and pull our focus back on you. Help us to clearly see right from wrong, so that we can be a light for those living in darkness. Amen.