Hello again, friends! Thank you for coming to visit my blog.
As I mentioned previously, I am currently attending a small Bible college. In it, our main textbook is--you guessed it--the Bible. One of the classes I am in right now is about the Book of Romans. We are doing a nine-week study, going through it verse-by-verse. We are learning a lot of wonderful things about Jesus, salvation, and the Christian life. I am really loving it and would like nothing more than to share some of those things with you, readers. Thankfully, my class is making it easy for me to do so. You see, we have been assigned to write a "letter" to someone explaining each chapter as we study through it and adding practical applications. Functionally, the assignments are to help us be able to regurgitate what we're learning in normal language so that we can share it with people who know little or nothing about God and the Bible. If it would be all right with you all, I would love to be able to share my Romans letters with you on this blog. In other words, I get to share all the wonderful things I am learning with you that I would want to share with you anyway--and accomplish homework as well. Win-win, right?
First, please, please read Romans 1 before you read my explanation and application in the following paragraphs. I would like to think I have a lot of great things to say to in this letter, but nothing I can ever write will even compare with the words God Himself wrote down in a book for us. Plus, I'm a flawed human. I would hate to inadvertently tell you a lie, so please double check what I say by comparing it to the original. You can find free access to the Bible on BibleGateway.com or a myriad other websites, as well as in print.
All of that said, I hope that my words will bring better understanding of what you read in the Bible. There are a lot of obscure words and cultural things that are particular to the time period that Romans was written in which are better understood with study, and I am privileged to be able to study all of that at my Bible college. So if you think you could benefit from my explanation and application, please read on. But if you have to choose between reading my blog and reading the Bible, please choose the Bible.
The Book of Romans begins with an introduction. Paul the apostle, a Christian leader from the first century AD, wrote Romans as a letter to the Christian believers who were living in the city of Rome at the time. Paul had never met these believers, and so he spends the first half of the chapter explaining who he is, what he believes, and some of why he is writing. Paul considers himself a slave to Jesus Christ who was chosen by God to be an apostle (a leader of special authority from God) and was sent out to preach the Good News about Jesus Christ, which was promised centuries before. Paul then explains who Jesus is: A human descendant of King David, proven to be the Son of God when He was raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit, and the master and leader of all Christians. It is through and because of Jesus that God chose Paul and several others to have power and authority as apostles in order to tell non-Jews (and Jews) what God did for them so that they will believe and obey Him.
The next verse or two tells who he is writing to--the believers in Rome--and gives them a blessing as a greeting. Then Paul tells them that he prays for them and prays for the opportunity to come and meet them, though he has been prevented from coming to that point. He wants to bring them some spiritual knowledge, encourage them, and be encouraged by them through seeing the good that God is doing in and through them. Paul tells them that he believes it is his job to help all people by bringing the Good News of Jesus. This news is applicable to all people and is how God saves people from death in Hell; all people who believe in this news are given right standing with God, the Judge, and are given life.
Paul changes directions at this point in his letter. The first part was the overview, and the rest of the letter explains everything in more detail. The second half of the first chapter explains what we humans did wrong, which is why we need Jesus. First, God is angry at all people who are evil and who suppress and reject the truth of God. Paul shows that all people know the truth about God because God made it obvious to them. Nature, which is God’s creation, is visible to everyone and shows that God is by nature eternally powerful and divine. All people knew God at the very beginning of time and can still see Him through the natural world, but they refused to acknowledge Him. Instead, they decided to imagine what God must be like, and ended up “creating” false gods that have no power. So they became idiots: They had the truth about God, but they traded it for a lie, for false gods of their own making. And God decided He would allow them to continue doing wrong if that’s what they really wanted, although that was never what He wanted for them. So humanity rejected the Creator God and worshiped created things. Doing this led them down the path of more evil things, and so they turned against the natural order of how God created human romantic relationships and instead became homosexuals. They filled their lives with everything evil, from disobeying their parents to murdering others. They even invented new ways to do evil. They knew that, though God is allowing them to follow their evil desires presently, He will judge them for their actions someday. They know this, and yet they continue to do evil and even encourage others to do the same.
That is the conclusion to Romans 1, and at this point, you might be wondering what this has to do with anything. The first part of the chapter is very positive and the second part is pretty negative and might even be offensive to you. Know first that the first three chapters of Romans are negative because they talk about how all humans are horrible screw ups. But the book returns to positive topics right after that. Know also that, even though these chapters say some pretty harsh things about certain practices, God still loves the people who do them. You will also see that if you wait and keep reading as I update each week.
In the meantime, there are some applications that can be drawn from this chapter. One of the biggest applications for me is simply to have the knowledge found in the chapter. It is helpful to know who Paul is and by what authority he is writing, so that I can trust his credibility and understand his background when he writes this letter. He was sent directly from God to give the message he preaches, both in this book and in his other books. Another thing that is helpful for me is to understand how God looks at people. Knowing that all people are capable of understanding from the natural world that there is a God and that there is some kind of judgment coming for their actions--knowing this is helpful to me to see that God is not judging them--us--with them being completely ignorant. Also, it is really helpful to see what God considers to be evil. It is one thing to say that evil actions are evil; we can agree on that. But without a list of what God considers to be evil, we will rely on our own definitions, which will get us in trouble because our definitions are not the same as God's. It is God’s definitions that matter since He is the Judge.
In any case, there is much more to the book, and I hope you are interested in seeing what it has to say--there’s a lot of hope coming up! But for now, please comment with your thoughts! I would love to chat with you about all of it, even if it is a critique.
As always, I pray that God will use my words to sink some of His truth deeper into your hearts. And I pray that He will keep me on track and focused on Him so that I may know Him and be of greater use.
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