Theology for Everybody: RomansSample

If you’re good, then you don’t need God. If you’re good, then you don’t need Jesus, and you don’t need to change. But if you read Romans correctly, then you will realize how bad you are and how good God is. And it will create within you a crisis that should send you running to Jesus for forgiveness.

Justice is a hot topic in our time. People are protesting injustice in the streets daily and raving online about the moral outrage issue of the day. We are told repeatedly about the stories of people who have suffered, and we are expected to have empathy and compassion for them, trying to see things through their eyes.

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be God? Everyone knows how they’ve been wronged or sinned against, but look at God. He has sinned against no one, but everyone has sinned against Him. The collective injustice experienced by all humanity throughout the ages does not equal the injustice God has endured. If we truly believe in justice, then we will believe God has a right to His justice. But everyone demanding justice does not really want God to get His justice; they just want their own brand of justice. God gets His justice through either Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins or in hell, where sinners are rightly judged and condemned.

Since “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), those who do not fear God have no real knowledge. Those who do not fear God believe they are not accountable to any external authority, such as God’s law, and as a result, they don’t think they need forgiveness of sin.

In this life, sinners like to judge other sinners and demand justice while ignoring their own sins and God’s justice. However, on the day of God’s judgment, there will only be silence from sinners as we will have no excuses to make, blame to shift, or defense to offer. On Judgment Day, we will not blame systemic forces, cultural preferences, or poor parenting. We will be judged by God’s law.

Admittedly, as sinners, we have a hard time comprehending God is actually totally good and we are totally bad. Rather than complaining, though, we should repent.

When someone does something bad, they receive the death sentence. God looked at humanity and gave us a death sentence. The only way God could stop us from sinning was to stop us from living. The whole planet was cursed, every inch of creation infected and affected by our sin. Then Jesus Christ came to the earth and died to fix the problem we have made. If you’re a good person, then why did Jesus have to die? If you can fix your problem, then why His death? One of two things must be true: either God is overreacting, or we are underreacting.

When Satan and his demons sinned, they were cast out of God’s presence. Jesus didn’t come for them. He didn’t die or rise again for them. There is no hope, grace, or salvation for them; there’s only hell. We deserve what they got because that would be justice, but instead, we get Jesus. That’s crazy grace!

Today’s Reflection

Is there any habitual sin you need to repent of to God?