ok ok so ROMANS is the book we are currently in...This is what my Bible tells us about Paul's letters/Romans:
We can learn from Paul's letters a great deal about Paul's faith and his understanding of what Jesus Christ means for the life of the ordinary Christian. Romans was written to pave the way for Paul's visit to a church he had never seen, but whose help he needed as he began to preach the gospel in the western Meditteranean world. Roamsn is one of the fullest statements of Paul's faith. He tries to show how Christianity is rooted in Judaism, but is a fiath for all of humanity. Romans is a book full of the power and grace of God and has been a source of inspiration and renewal in the church from earliest times to the present.
I think it's interesting when Paul writes in Romans 2 about God's righteous judgment. It says plainly that "for it is not the heareres of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified." Man...because we know Christ and follow Him and His laws (despite our remaining shortcomings), we are justified in His sight! Now, that is crazy to me. I am constantly beating myself up it seems for what I do wrong but someone said something the other day that made me think: Do you forget or fail to remember that those sins, those things you do wrong, are forgiven? Is that why you won't come to the surface about them, talk about them, or confront them?
Let us never forget the power of the cross, that we are forgiven and made righteous in His sight because of our belief and our faith in Him.
This (esp. the part about "the doers of the law") all ties in with the whole concept of "faith without works is dead." And that's something I've been working a lot more on lately. I think at the beginning of this school year I was much more focused on reading the Bible every day and paying attention in Church, etc....but now I'm trying to balance that and actually putting the things that I learn from the Bible and from Church into action. It's been a little bit of a challenge, but I'm working on it! I've also realized that how can we possibly expect to be TRUE Christians and act as real role models for others if we aren't putting our faith into action? In a way, not doing so makes our faith seem kind of not believeable, not real, and not really reaching its full potential.
ReplyDelete