Grace and Peace,

today we are going over Romans 3.

Here is a link to it on bibleagateway.com

Over the past year or so, I have gotten in to reading much more.  Getting rid of our cable last September has helped and also reading about things I am interested makes a difference.  In the past, I’d read things because people would tell me it was good and that I should read it, but that topic interested them, not me.  Of course reading about what interests me is more enjoyable but it took years to realize that…  I was part of a group reading through Letters from a Skeptic and at one point Ed, the skeptic, said how things like the sermon on the mount from Matthew 5-7 make the Christian walk impossible.  How can you be expected to live up to something like that?  His son Greg, who is a theologian, responses affirming that truth.   We can’t live up to it, if being angry is murder and thinking is the same as acting, we are all doomed.  He says how the sermon on the mount is supposed to drive us to Jesus because we are in need of a Saviour.

In Romans 3, Paul is talking about how when we come to accept Jesus as Saviour, it isn’t by works we are saved, but by faith.  What stuck out to me was verse 20:

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law;

rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

After reading Letters from a Skeptic this had different meaning to me.  Without spending time reading the bible, I would still think that murder was wrong, but I wouldn’t think that being angry with someone would be just as bad.  Apart from the bible, we compare ourselves to worldly standards and normally to people who are “worse” than we are.  According to those standards, we are good maybe even great people.

But what if we compare to a different person in the world, what if we compare ourselves to Jesus?  Do your good deeds still measure up to be a good person?  Probably not, but here is the good news, we are not saved by our acts and our deeds.  We are saved only through substitutionary atonement, through Christ’s death for our sins.

Learning what is expected of us through the bible is good and we should strive to live as Christ because we are ambassadors of Jesus to this world.  But whether you rip your clothes and wear sack cloth and ashes when you repent isn’t what is important.  When we read all these rules that we don’t and can’t live up to, it should drive us to the cross and look up to Jesus and say ‘I struggle to do this.  Thank you for loving me even though I turn away from you.  Help me to follow your ways more.’

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

Romans 3:28

If you don’t know Christ as Saviour, it’s not too late.  God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it.  Find a community of Christians to join (a church), start reading God’s message to you (the bible), and pray.  Prayer is simply talking with God.  How else can you build a relationship without communication?

-Zack

What has stuck out to you?

How has reading this chapter today been different than the first time you read it?

If it’s your first time reading this, what has made you stop and think?