Our world lacks hope. The book of Romans is full of wonderful hope. It is the book that God used to bring Martin Luther out of terrible fear to glorious freedom. Luther had been trapped in works-based religion. He was tormented by his past and the fact that he was not good enough for God. He tried to give all he could to make himself right with God, but nothing seemed to work.
And then he read “the righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) What glorious freedom he discovered in that verse. He had been looking to his own efforts to get right with God, but God taught him the way to receive righteousness was by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.
No wonder Paul writes “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16). Why would you be ashamed of such glorious news! Well we tend to be ashamed or embarrassed because it seems so simple, or perhaps because it offends or pride to be told that we can’t do it in our own strength.
But as Luther discovered after trying everything, we can’t save ourselves. We need the gospel! The gospel is the power of God for salvation. It’s the only way anyone can be saved, whether from a religious Jewish background or a pagan Gentile background. All need to turn to Christ.
Why? Well the next few chapters of Romans well show us how serious the problem is. But here in Chapter 1 Paul begins to tell us what our biggest problem is. It’s not disease, or climate change, or war, or money, or drugs, or education. Our biggest problem is the wrath of God (v18). God is rightly angry. His anger is not like our anger that explodes when we don’t get our way. God’s anger is his controlled hostility to all that is evil. It’s a good thing. It shows that God cares about how we treat one another, and hows we treat Him. It is good that he is angry about evil. The problem is, all of us deserve His wrath for the way we have treated Him.
Romans 1 tells us that the problem begins with us suppressing the truth about God. Many people try and deny God even exists! Or if He does exist, that He has no place in their lives. but the universe is shouting out that there is a creator! We see beauty all around us, we see evidence of a creator everywhere. But we deny it, and believe the lie that have evolved over millions of years by blind chance.
Well God says, we’re without excuse. How awful it is, that instead of worshipping God, we worship His creation. We take the gifts but ignore the giver. The tragic result of this is that God gives us over to our own desires. Our world thinks you can be what you want, decide your sexuality, and thinks this is freedom. But God says, this is simply evidence of his judgment. God is giving people over to their own desires, because they have exchanged the truth about God for a lie (v24).
Where is the hope? God has revealed in the gospel that we cannot save ourselves, and this is serious, we deserve God’s wrath, but the righteous shall live by faith! Paul has told us that the gospel is all about Jesus (1:1-6) and that through faith in Jesus we can be saved. The wonderful truth is that Jesus took the wrath that we deserved, and offers us a righteousness we don’t deserve as we’ll see as we continue reading this great book of Romans. What a glorious gospel!
Light and Momentary Troubles 
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