The Romance of Romans-Part 10

Romans Chapter 3 cont'd

I will continue to anticipate arguments based on mere human reasoning. "If our being wrong magnifies the fact that God is right, he shouldn't have any complaints and he's unjust for judging us for our wrongs." Wrong again! God is bound by his nature to approve all that is right and to condemn all that is wrong. You might respond, "If God's truth is seen more clearly by its contrast to my falsehood and he receives more honor because of it, how can he be just if he still condemns me for being sinful?" Some have taken this reasoning to such an extreme that they recommend (and have actually claimed that we have taught!), "Let's do more and more evil, so that greater good may result." This kind of thinking is truly damnable and not even worth a rebuttal!

Comments:
Paul is beginning to ramp up in anticipation of revealing the Divine Logic (a word connected to "Logos") of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Before he does, he gets a couple more common objections of people who are skeptical of the gospel out of the way.

The first one is about a flippant attitude that some have about God's amazing ability to capitalize on the tragic presence of evil in the world (and in human hearts!) to show forth His own holiness and justice (and later...mercy) by contrast. But instead of being stunned and humbled by this Divine attribute, some people, in essence, react to the gospel by saying, "Oh...we're actually doing God a 'favor' by being the 'flawed object' of this contrast. So...if He holds us accountable for our sins, He is unjust. If He is unjust, then He is not worthy of our worship and service. Hey Paul...we gotcha...you're preaching foolish nonsense. And...if what you're saying is really true, sin isn't such a big deal anyway. So what's all your urgency about."

The second one takes this reaction to the gospel message a step further. This argument says, "So Paul, what you're actually then saying is that we might as well sin as much as we can. If God can 'use' our sin to bring glory to Himself, then let's give Him some more material to work with. Cool. Ha...now we really gotcha!" This is obviously not what Paul is saying. Just take a step back and rehearse the horrors of sin in our world and in world history...and in our personal lives and relationships and reread chapter 1.

Still...there is an important irony here for us who follow Jesus and share the good news of his grace. If some people do not react to our message of God's grace in Christ in a similar way and accuse us saying these kinds of things, we probably aren't preaching what Paul did! God's grace is so free and freeing...so unintimidated by the presence of evil and sin...so capable of overcoming and negating the tragedy of our fallen existence...so filled with a Beauty that totally eclipses all the ugliness of evil...that a superficial and flippant reaction to hearing about the good news often causes people conclude that sin and evil really aren't much a problem after all...if what we're saying it true. Proper preaching the the gospel has always made believers vulnerable to these accusations that twist it's inscrutable Logic into such foolishness.

God's actual attitude toward sin and evil is revealed in the gospels as we see him come humbly into our world in Jesus to live right in the midst of the sinful age for love's sake. We see him seeking and loving and forgiving and healing and and resurrecting the lost, the unloved, the sinful, the sick and the deceased. We see Jesus pressing beyond the sin and evil in people to see and call forth who they were really called to be...doing all that he did to free their hearts to embrace the Dawn of new creation that was rising upon the Dusk of the old creation to trump it's darkness with a brilliant light. God loves the sinner--his "fallen image bearers".

Yet we also see the mood change in the gospels to that of a heavy sobriety...a time of temptation, agony, betrayal, scattering, mockery, and terrible injustice...as Jesus, at the end of three and a half years of compassion-filled ministry turns his face like flint to go to Jerusalem to deal with the root problem of humanity. And this he ultimately did by taking upon himself the guilt and shame of all humanity--past, present and future--so that he could then take it away and triumph over it through his sacrificial death on the cross and then finally through his blessed resurrection. God hates sin--the disease that has held captive his "fallen image bearers". So...sin is a terrible problem and nothing to be flip about. But God....