This Week in Scripture; the sinfulness of sin

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." - Romans 1:16-17

For the past couple of weeks, my pastor has been preaching from Romans, a book that is known to be difficult in understanding. This week, he started on the big chunk of the book that talked exclusively of sin (Yup; that word. The one that makes hardened atheists roll their eyes and the legalistic theist think "That's not me; it's that other guy who's beating his chest and not looking up at God."). The chunk of sin-talk extends to chapter 3.

I'm not going to waste your time with a full exegesis of those chapters; it all boils down to this: It's not Good News unless you know what the bad news is first (What's the point of knowing what the Good News is unless you know that you have rejected God from the beginning and instead would rather follow temporary and fleeting things? Only then would you realize how much you need that righteousness that only God is more than willing to provide.). Until that is realized, then the Good News is moot.

Here's where the sinfulness of sin pops in; we know how debased we really are and we understand that God is holy and can't stand the sight of sin. With that thought in mind, we still do the things that we do and push God either to the back of our minds or out of the picture entirely; it's as if we don't care what He thinks about the whole thing (In a way, that's exactly what we think.).

It's about time to face the prospect that, although we say that we bow our knees to Him, we are hypocrites in that fashion. Repent and serve the God that has called us to Him!