Wednesday 27th April - Romans 1

Today’s chapter is Romans 1, you can read it here

Tom writes:

Senseless, faithless, heartless and ruthless. In this letter Paul is making a bid for all people - Greeks and non-Greeks, Jews and Gentiles - to admit their human life has been defined by those damning descriptors. And in this letter Paul is making a bid for all people, through Jesus and the Spirit, to let themselves be redefined as a new humanity full of sense, full of faith, full of heart and… full of ruth. Ah. So, that word play doesn’t really work for the ruthless bit... but I can claim it does in the Greek! The motive of this life-changing letter is to make a diverse church strong and ready to support a wider stretch in their mission; even sending Paul to Spain. And you need to keep that motive in mind as you read through Romans in these next few weeks. This is a dense and tricky letter but God wants you to read it in order to make you strong.

This letter - if you read it right - will wreck you and rewrite you as someone you never dared believe you could be. This letter will expose to you how utterly senseless it is to ever depend on yourself. It will pull no punches when drawing attention to the despicable depth of your depravity. This letter will call you to total and utter faith in Jesus; a faith that requires a total reimagining of everything you were, are and will be. It will be an extreme makeover beyond anything you thought necessary. And then - maybe for the first time in your life - it will put real heart into you; it will display vast vistas of Holy Spirit’s availability to you and mentoring of you that should leave you gobsmacked for days. Finally it will comfort you and cajole you into playing your part in a compassion-filled community that overflows with real kindness even in the midst of diversity and challenge. When this letter is done with you, you’ll be a glorious manifestation of the Spirit’s new humanity; you will be established in love. Oh this letter. I love this letter. I’m so indebted to this letter. It has changed my life in countless ways already and I’ve barely even scratched its surface. Please choose to read this letter and to let it re-define everything you’ve ever known to be true. 

Question for reflection

What do you make of Paul’s description of the effects of sin on humans?