Romans 1

A couple of verses really stuck with me this week from Romans. I wanted to share them.

Folks, the Bible makes no secret about what you will face you when you choose to carry the message of Jesus to this world. This world is not for the faint of heart. In delivering the Gospel, we are often tasked with defeating strongholds and arguments. As a reminder from 2 Corinthians 10…

³ For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. ⁴ The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

In Romans, Paul knew the evil we would face when he wrote Romans 1… I think maybe part of the reason he wrote this was to warn against confusing right and wrong…confusing light and darkness. He wanted us to know we would face such people and also maybe wanted to make sure that we, ourselves, don’t fall prey to such duplicitous thinking. I ran across the following verses when listening to some Bible Study podcasts. These are from Josh Howerton.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles…..

……²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Jesus faced such men. He faced men who had exchanged the goodness of God for empty ideologies and philosophies. Their human wisdom was deemed foolishness by God. If we follow Him(and likely even if we don’t), we will most assuredly face such men. We must pray for God’s wisdom and strength when confronted with evil.