Journeying with Paul continued...
With questions still lingering, of how Paul knew there were Christians in Rome and whether or not he personally knew these believers, I open my Bible to the book of Romans.
Not far into Romans 1, in verse 11, we see that Paul tells them that he may 'at last' succeed in going to them. That tells me that he has long been wanting to go to Rome. What made him want to go there? I know from this study that Paul was receiving direct revelations from the Holy Spirit, so I know his wanting to go to Rome was most likely of the Holy Spirit, but I wonder what human thing brought his attention to Rome and what human thing prompted his wanting to go there. But like the other questions I have about Paul and Rome, this one will continue to go unanswered. Paul goes on to tell the Romans that he was been wanting to come to them but has been prevented from doing so.
In verse 16, Paul says...
For I am not ashamed of the gospel...
This gives me yet another glimpse into who Paul is. Now, really I already knew this because Romans has long been one of my favorite books in Scripture. Even before I understood what it meant to be Reformed, before I knew there was such a thing as monergism, I enjoyed the book of Romans. I have been known to read this book over and over just because I enjoyed it. But even if I hadn't read Romans before, I believe I would have known that Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel. He has shown, through all that I have read in Scripture through this study on Paul's life, that he is not the least ashamed of the Gospel. I don't believe anyone could have lived as he did, done the things he did, and had any hint of shame where the Gospel was concerned.
The first book of Romans has Paul writing of God's wrath. He says...
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. verse 28
And then he goes on to give a long list of all the things that God gave the people up to. As I read over those verses and the verses before them, I couldn't help but see America today in them. That section of Scripture could have just as easily been written to America today. In verse 32, Paul says...
Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
How much of today's American lifestyle is rooted in sin? Movies that depict sin as a good thing, movies that show sin as the way to live, movies that glorify what I would call demons at best-living dead people, music that encourages all sorts of sin, and an acceptance of sin in all of daily life. Gone are the days when couples were looked down on or even shunned for living together without marriage, in fact today, it's encouraged and seen as perfectly fine, given all but the same status as marriage.
Not all that long ago I saw a note, posted on social media, by a relative. It was a list of things that a man should (or shouldn't, I don't quite remember which) do for his wife. This relative tagged her live in boyfriend, with whom she has a child. In the comments section I saw the boyfriends reply...he said, 'notice that says "wife not girlfriend"...Now this is a man that has seen fit to move this young woman in with him and seemed to see no problem with having a child with her, but he rudely distinguished between wife and girlfriend, lowering her status in his life, when by nature of their living situation and their child, she should have been considered his wife regardless of whether or not they had had a wedding. Not only that but he proceeded to enter into an argument with her on this social media forum. Now, to give them credit, I don't know the man at all, have only met him a couple of times, and have seen nothing of this couples relationship with each other. The interaction that I took to be an argument could very well have been friendly banter between them. I do not know. What I do know is that this man straight out told the mother of his child, the young woman he had moved in with him, that she was not considered to have the status of a wife.
This is one couple in a country filled with many, many more just like them. They live next door to us, down the street, and across town. I'm not so much trying to point out the couples, although they are living in sin, as I am trying to point out that the friends, family, and neighbors of these couples see nothing wrong with what they are doing. Neither do the buildings, or the people that fill them, that call themselves 'churches'. I know that some of them do but the majority of them don't. In fact many of them open their doors wide, offering to accept them as they are.
And really...those couples, and the sins they live in...are really, in my mind anyway...not near as bad as the sin that many other so-called couples live in, even under the guise of marriage. And our country embraces them and their sin.
...God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done...
Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Those words of Paul are wise and so very applicable to America today. And they give us insight into what Paul believed to be right or wrong. This last week I had someone comment on one of my posts, The black and white of Scripture, telling me that my belief, Reformed Christian, was an abomination to God. Actually, what I think they said is that Calvinism is an abomination to God. Now, let me say right here that I do not consider myself a Calvinism. I am a follower of Christ, not of any man, and I did not know anything about John Calvin when I began to see Scripture in the way I do. In other words the Lord saved me and showed me His word without any help from Calvin. But I had told this person, who I do not know, that I am Reformed and added that some call it Calvinism. This person than told me that Calvinism is an abomination to God.
Scripture tells us what God considers to be an abomination, and it has nothing to do with Calvinism. I won't, however, get sidetracked on that topic. If anyone wishes to know exactly what Scripture says is an abomination a simple internet search for 'Bible verses abomination' should get them all the answer they seek.
The person leaving the comment that my beliefs are an abomination was off the mark on what God considers an abomination, even if what I belief happens to be wrong. But here, in Romans 1, Paul gives us insight into some of the things that God turns his wrath upon. Paul never says, here, that they are an abomination to God but he does show us the signs of a debased mind and a group of people given up by God. And that information gives us insight into what Paul would consider right and wrong, and what he would see as sin in other people.
In Romans 2, Paul uses the words, 'O man', twice. Those two little words, O man, seem so important to me. In their very simplicity they seem to say...you are nothing but man...what are you compared to God. And this is how Paul speaks to, or of, people.
Paul, in this letter to the Romans, tells of what salvation is and of how it is, and isn't, given. He gives a world of information in this single letter. He tells of how sin came into the world, or at least who brought it into the world, and how it has afflicted all of mankind since, (chapter 5), and how we are either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ (ch. 6). He shows through a single statement that Christians are not immune to suffering (8:18) and that the elect cannot be separated from God (8:33, 37-39).
As I read Romans now, thinking of it not as a book but as a letter written to a group of people, and as I think of the writing supplies Paul must have had, or not had, to write this letter...it seems to me to be a long, labor intensive, possibly difficult or expensive, letter to write.
To be continued...
That takes me through the ninth book of Romans. My intention was to work through all of Romans today but something came up that go my mind on other points of Scripture and as I tried to get back to it, I found that my mind was still mulling over the other things that I have studied and thought on today. So I am cutting this post almost in half in order to give the rest of Romans the attention it deserves.
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