Romans 3

Romans 3

God is a God for both Jews and Gentiles alike! That is the point Paul is really trying to drive home in Romans 3. The Jews are just special. God chose them as a people to come to earth by. So the Jews felt that Jesus was theirs, but this isn’t true. The Jews were chosen to be a light, to be held to a higher standard, and to share the good news of Christ. They had advantages in know who Jesus was and because of this they had no excuses when it came to spreading the news.

Jumping over to verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 Paul tells us that he is speaking from flesh here. He is asking the questions we often ask ourselves: “God has to forgive us, doesn’t He? Isn’t that His job?” Nope. Wrong. God CHOOSES to forgive you. He drowns us in his mercy and love when we don’t deserve it. We sin, he forgives us; we walk away, he is waiting for us when we decide to come back; we can’t get to him all the way, he meets us halfway. We don’t deserve Any of this! The only thing we deserve is death, it’s harsh, I know, but it’s true and sometimes the truth hurts, sometimes you can’t handle it.

Within in this chapter Paul quotes Psalms 14:1-3. It consist of question, questions about any and all sin you may or may not have committed. Take a second, right now and open your Bible to these verses, read them…God will know if you read them ;). Done? Now think to yourself…Have I ever lied? Have I ever hurt someone’s feelings? Our answer is YES! As it says in verse 23 “for ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” To God sin is sin and any sin makes us a sinner. My friend once gave me a fun little analogy. It goes like this: as humans we rate our sin. Murder is a lot worse than lying, right? Not to God. Say lying counts for 1 soda can, stealing is 4, and murder is 8. We are going for a bard graph kind of thing. The world sees the soda cans straight on, stacked higher for the worse sin, but God looks down and sees all these cans from the top. God sees them all the same. Hopefully that lame little analogy makes this stick with you.

Towards the end in verses 28 and 29 Paul finally gives us the “wonderful news.” There is a way to be forgiven! We must trust Christ to take away our sins by what he did for us on the cross. “Trusting means putting our confidence in Christ to forgive our sins, to make us right with God, and to empower us to live the way he taught us” (Life Application Study Bible). This forgiveness is available to anybody and everybody, no matter your background or past behavior, because everyone deserves a second chance and everybody can be forgiven.

There was one foot note I found very inspiring. I didn’t have much thought on it though, because it was already spelled out. It’s on verse 28: “Why does God save us by faith alone? (1) Faith eliminates the pride of human effort, because faith is not a deed that we do. (2) Faith exalts what God has done, not what people do. (3) Faith admits that we can’t keep the law or measure up to God’s standards—we need help. (4) Faith is based on our relationship with God, not our performance for God.” I really just love the break down of Faith. To me, it’s really fascinating and inspiring and it makes me think of my weakness. Especially in the third point, we need help. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 Paul quotes Jesus who says “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It’s just nice to know that we don’t always have to be strong and keep that brave face on. It is good to breakdown and submit to God, especially in you weakest times.  “For when I am weak, you are strong” 2 Cor. 12:10.

The last verse I want to talk about is 18. I saved it for last because what I wanted to share doesn’t really apply to the rest of chapter 3. Verse 18 says “These is no fear of God before their eyes.” Fear of God? Yup. We are told to fear God: Leviticus 25:17 “…but fear your God. I am the LORD (Yahweh) your God.” It was explained to me in two parts, one somewhat nicer than the other. Part one: God is your father and you should fear him like you fear a father. It’s a respectful fear, you don’t want to disappoint him, you want him to be proud of you, and you don’t want to get in trouble by him. Part two: you should and need to Fear God! It’s difficult to wrap your head around (this is someone talking at me) but with the snap of his fingers, probably less than that, you’re dead. God wiped out an entire people because they were sinning against him and they turned to their fleshly desires. All but 8 died. That is the story of Noah and the ark. God wiped them out and He could do the same to us. He won’t, but he could. He won’t because of the rainbow. God promised that he would never wipe out a people like that again. He will show his unconditional love, mercy, and patience (the story of Noah – Genesis 5:25 – 10:1). It says that one of Gods days is a thousand of our days (2 Peter 3:8). It wouldn’t be too tough to wait a day then, but who are we to make God wait on us?

So here is what we should be thinking about:

     1.  What sins have we committed that we have been washed clean of, and what that cleans look like.          Meditate of the fact that Jesus, a perfect man, died so we could live in sin.

     2.  What does fearing God look like to you? How do you understand it, what does it look like in your life, how does it motivate you to change your actions and behavior?

I know these are staying kind of long, read them at your own pace. That’s the beauty of the internet: you can access it anytime your little heart desires

P.S. I purposefully didn’t write out as many verses. Open your bible ;)