Ahhhh, Paul’s letter to the Romans. Peter wrote in his second letter of Paul’s writings, “there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16).
I hope we will keep in mind that while Paul’s language may, at times, be hard to understand, it’s not impossible to understand. I encourage you to wrestle with text beyond our few minutes to grasp what God wants you to grasp in your reading this time through the letter.
Here are some of the parallel ideas Paul writes about in this first chapter.
- The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel.
- The wrath of God is revealed from heaven … against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.
- God gave the unrighteous over to impurity and dishonor.
- God gave the unrighteous over to dishonorable passions.
- God gave the unrighteous over to a depraved mind.
- God can be known by his creation, his eternal power and divine nature, his invisible attributes seen plainly in the world he made.
- The unrighteous chose to worship and serve the created, not the Creator.
- The unrighteous exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image.
- The unrighteous exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
We can take Paul’s declaration as our own.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.17 For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith to faith, just as it is written, “The righteous by faith will live.”
Romans 1:16, 17
