Friday, February 27, 2009
Romans 1:16-32 Why I must boldly declare the gospel
I am not ashamed of this gospel. God has powerfully used it to rescue anyone who believes starting with the Jews and now also the Greeks. This power comes first from it's revelation of God's righteousness. It was by faith at the beginning and still is now. As the scripture says, "The righteous man shall live by faith." Mankind's unrighteousness and ungodliness has brought on the wrath of God because of our continual suppression of the truth. They know all about God for He has revealed Himself among them. Clear back to the beginning this creation of His has been declaring His power, His divinity and many evident facts about God that we can't see but know are obviously true from what we see around us. They are without excuse. They knew God and instead of acknowledging the obvious and being thankful for such a God they twisted the facts into absurd speculation. The more they did this the more foolish they became. Less and less of the light of truth could filter into their hearts. They said they were wise but became fools. They had a perfect incorruptible God to worship but threw that away for corruptible worship of man, birds, animals and creepy things. Finally God cut them loose to be driven by the lusts of their unstable hearts to impurity. What followed was the disgusting degradation of their bodies. They wanted to believe the lie and ignore the truth about God. They would rather worship and serve the creature rather than their eternal blessed Creator.
So God consented to their demand to follow their destructive obsessions. Soon women stepped out and were driven outside the bounds of what they were designed for and of course men abandoned their obligation and attraction to women and burned in attraction to other men committing shameless acts and suffered the natural consequences of such error. Since they actively worked to push God out of their thoughts and heart God set their minds adrift as well . This blossomed into all kinds of impropriety: unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, malice, envy, murder, strife and deceit. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, braggarts, inventors of evil and rebellious children. They've lost the capacity to be sympathetic, to be trusted, to love, to have mercy. It doesn't stop there. They blatantly do these things knowing God declares death on all such activity and then encourage others to practice them as well.
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1 comment:
"creepy" things? I don't know if I trust this New Dad Version of the Bible.
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