Lent Day Twelve
“Romans 1:16–20”
Romans 1:16-20 The Passion Translation
16 I refuse to be ashamed of sharing the joyful message of God’s liberating power unleashed in us through Christ! For I am thrilled to preach that everyone who believes is set free— the Jew first, and to people everywhere!
17 This gospel unveils within us a continual revelation of God’s righteousness—a perfect righteousness given to us when we believe! And it moves us from receiving life through faith, to the power of living by faith! This is what the Scripture means when it says, “We are right with God through life-giving faith!”
18 For God in heaven unveils his holy anger breaking forth against every form of sin, both toward ungodliness that lives in hearts and evil actions. For the wickedness of humanity deliberately smothers the truth and keeps people from acknowledging the truth about God.
19 In reality, the truth of God is known instinctively, for God has embedded this knowledge inside every human heart.
20 Opposition to truth cannot be excused on the basis of ignorance, because from the creation of the world, the invisible qualities of God’s nature have been made visible, such as his eternal power and transcendence. He has made his wonderful attributes easily perceived, for seeing the visible makes us understand the invisible! So then, this leaves everyone without excuse.
This passage in Romans 1 has always been one I have skipped through quite quickly to get to the more positive and wonderful truths in Romans 5 and 8. I love this book of Romans. It is very rich. But the translation offered us in the Passion version has helped me notice the starting point for this big meaty letter afresh. And it can’t be skipped over, I don’t think. All this sin that makes God so mad that Paul lists in this chapter, is the backdrop to the most breathtaking truth: that God’s anger is held alongside His great love in making us with embedded truth ‘inside every human heart’ as the translators say here.
What a stunning thought.
Every person ever born, every sinner listed in this catalogue of naughtiness and squalor, is someone made on purpose by God and carefully implanted with the capacity to grasp and live in truth.
And imagine being the One who made this wonderful truth telling, potentially loving bunch of humans, and then watching them choose over and over again to ‘smother’ that God given truth seed with sin.
We can’t leap over the ‘sin’ word. We can’t join the gospel in with other self-help methods of knowing we are enough. No, this gospel is predicated on only One truth. A truth that can be known and leaves none of us with an excuse. Not only do we have a seed of longing for this truth embedded in us at birth, not only have we smothered that seed with sin, but we have a chance to see the truth in flesh and blood in the person and work of Jesus. He makes the invisible, visible. No more wondering if God is love, if He cares, if He is near. Jesus is the embodiment of that truth and believing in Him is all that is needed to awaken the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Oh, what a glorious gospel! We will always be sinners, but looking to Him we see the invisible truth made visible. Forgiven, set free, and given life. Wow, now this is a mystery in plain sight!
Ruth Rice
Ruth Rice is Director of Renew Wellbeing, a charity which runs simple café style spaces attached to a quiet room where inner habits of wellbeing are shared. Ruth longs for every church to find ways to bring God’s peace onto the high street and open spaces for all to attend to their wellbeing.