To read the passage you can click HERE.
“Lord, would You capture my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection”
This is one of the greatest passages in all of the New Testament. It has a compendium of some of the greatest concepts in Christianity: righteousness, faith, justification, redemption, atonement, grace, glory of God.
This is a passage that pleads for us to think and meditate on… to ponder if you will. It is pregnant with hope, and power, and joy-filled relief.
This is a passage that is almost too good to be true. And yet it is bonafide truth.
Think about it. Paul is telling the Jews (and us) that they can stop trying to earn the favor of God by obeying a bunch of rules. Rules incidentally that were established by God. The rules were given not as a means to salvation but as a way of revealing to people that no matter how hard they tried they just could not meet the standard of obeying ALL of them. In other words, they show us how unlike God we really are.
People never knew whether they had done enough to satisfy God’s sense of justice and avoid his wrath.. It was a terrible way to live and people lived more in fear of God’s anger with them than in love for Him and His goodness to them.
Paul is explaining in this passage that you don’t have to live like that. Salvation is not based on what we do, it is based on what Christ has done. “We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
No doubt, this sounded too good to be true. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Paul didn’t end Romans with chapter 3 – he had some explaining to do). But once this begins to sink in and once we really understand the power of this grace oriented gospel then we can begin to worship God with heartfelt gratitude, serve Him with joy-fueled passion, and reveal Him with authenticity and integrity.
Praise be to God for a gospel that only seems to good to be true – but in fact is the greatest truth ever proclaimed.
Next Week’s Passage: Romans 4:1-12
Memory Verses: Romans 8:1-8 (still)