1 week down – 51 to go! Hope you are enjoying your readings. Let me stress again that this isn’t meant to be an in-depth reading, but rather a general overview of all of scripture. Don’t get too frustrated if you don’t understand everything and feel free to email me anytime along the way with a question – great or small.
We started the week off with a really heavy scripture, so let me spend a few moments on a few observations from Romans 1 & 2. Paul is writing to a predominantly gentile (non-Jewish) audience in Rome. His purpose is to explain how we are made right be God through faith (Romans 1:17). These first two chapters are written to help everyone, Jewish believer and gentile believer alike, that there were no excuses that would exclude them from judgment. Gentiles are reminded that God’s laws are evident in life and in the world but they failed to follow them, so they will be judged for going against God’s law (1:19-20). Jewish believers are reminded that any spiritual heritage they may have isn’t enough to grant them salvation (2:25). What is required isn’t a ceremony or a set of excuses, but a change of the heart – a transformation into a life lived seeking praise from God, not their own desires or praise from others (2:29).
What God is looking for us is not that we would be perfect. We’ll learn as we read that perfection isn’t something that we will ever reach. But what He wants is for us to seek His will instead of ours. This has been our struggle from creation. Adam and Eve are deceived because they wanted to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) – that they would no longer have to rely on Him but could take care of themselves. So sin entered the world in the form (and at its root) of a desire to run our own lives by our own rules. And what God wants isn’t for us to harness our desires and bend them to His will – to use our own will to do things that we think will please Him, but rather to turn over our lives and our wills to Him. His promise, in the words of Isaiah 1:18 – “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” All we have to do is stop trying to live life by our own rules in our own way and to turn our lives over to God.
God isn’t looking for great sacrifices, but for us to give up our sin and take up His will (Isaiah 1:15-16). “For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction.” Psalm 1:6