Wednesday, February 9, 2011

I Love Romans!

Romans is so very much my most favoritest book in the Bible because it is about me. I fall into guilt and shame when I consider the good person God created me to be and then consider the creature that I actually am. I'm not alone in this shame. Romans starts off by talking about how people, like me and like you, choose evil instead of good. We choose selfishness instead of charity; we steal, kill, lie, and hate senselessly and constantly. These behaviors hold their own punishments and, for a time, God lets people destroy themselves.

Romans starts with that darkest picture of human villainy so that it is as unsurprising as it is heartbreaking when it goes on to say that we cannot fulfill the righteousness that God requires.

The Son rises on Chapter 8. After Paul has a tantrum of self-loathing frustration in chapter 7 which concludes with a cry of despair at his own inability to act righteously or wisely; it turns out God knew our condition and decided that since we couldn't get holy then he would make us holy.

This gives a full picture of a holy God giving everything he is to salvage unholy humans. Which is a mind-trip in and of itself but he goes on to say that since God died for us when we were impossibly lost, now that we are redeemed we're not on some sort of probation; we didn't use up our last chance. God's infinite love is still there for us, the only difference is that it is now there for us: “his sons and daughters” instead of us: “his rebelling enemies” leaving us to guess and gasp at the question:

If The God of the universe loves so intensely that he died for his enemies, then what will he do for his sons?

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