June 13 - Romans 1: The Diagnosis

Ah, Romans 1. The chapter that infuriates some who believe differently than we do. It's been called hate speech because Paul actually names evidence of our sin nature, and some people don't like that.

Yet it's so simple and true for each and every one of us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Left to our own devices, we are a sinful people desperately in need of rescue.

They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. (1:23) 

...they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them. (1:25) 

Refusing to know God, they soon didn't know how to be human either. (1:26) 

And it's not as if they don't know better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face. And they don't care - worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best! (1:32) 

"You have broken the law of love. You love no one more than yourself. I have given you over to the path you've chosen, to using community for your sake. That path leads to eternal loneliness and to terrible tastes of it now...you have rebelled against love itself, against Me." 66 LL

I recognize this rebellion in myself everyday. There's a war waging in my soul, and on some days, it feels like the bad guy is winning by a long shot. Apart of Christ, it's absolutely true - I love no one more than myself. But while this diagnosis can be hard to swallow, it sets the stage - a very necessary one - for the Good News to come.

"Sin isn't a skeleton in the closet that we surround ourselves with restrictions to keep it in its place. It's a defective relationship with God. If we aren't convinced of the nature of that defect in our lives, it's unlikely we'll accept the remedy for that defect. 

"The failure to treat God as God, to honor him and thank him, Paul calls Sin, with a capital S, from which all lowercase sins ultimately proceed. If we, having read Paul's gospel, were to still think that sin is sensuality or vice or crudeness or any of the bad things we do, we would have missed his point completely. Paul wants us to understand that all those things are derivative. Sin, he asserts, is that original rebellion against God, that basic act of leaving him, that foundational failure to treat him as the Almighty. 

"This disaffection from God, called Sin, is humanity's despair. But when Paul writes of it, it's anything but despair, for by tracing our sins to their source, he prepares us for the solution. That solution has nothing to do with self-help and everything to do with a Savior." Eugene Peterson, Conversations, pg. 1739

A hard look at the bad news only makes the Good News sweeter. Thank You, Jesus.