A. At church, we continued our series on Romans. The pastor talked
about Romans 1-2. Paul in Romans 1-3 demonstrates that humans have
nothing in their hands to offer to God and thus need Christ as their
savior. Gentiles believe that there is no universal god for them to
please (or, more accurately, they deny that the God of Israel is that
God). Yet, deep inside, everyone has knowledge of God and morality. They
crave the harmony with God and neighbor that was lost in Eden. Jews
believe they are right with God because they are part of God’s covenant
and possess God’s law, but they, too, lack anything in their hands to
offer to God. God’s law is a way to life, but humans cannot arrive at
life through that means because they are twisted, not just broken.
People have rejected God’s faithfulness to them, replacing God with
themselves, so God has left them to their devices. While conservative
Christians focus on the condemnation of homosexual sex in Romans
1:26-27, Paul mentions other sins as well, such as hatred and gossip.
Paul’s emphasis on homosexual sex, the pastor suggested, is due to the
sexual libertinism of Greco-Roman society. In those days, Gentile men
had a wife and kids, perhaps another woman on the side, and the guys at
the gym with whom they had sex. Judaism by that time had become
monogamous and saw sex as a way to create life, and that may have
influenced Paul to regard homosexual sex as especially twisted.
B. The church service was about hope. The pastor showed a picture of
people eagerly awaiting the bus and said that this is the biblical
picture of hope: eager anticipation. In times when I was lonely and hurt
by continual rejection, I eagerly anticipated the eschaton, the
Christian afterlife. Now that things are going fairly well for me, I do
not have that eager anticipation as much. Hopefully, the blessings that I
have right now will continue for a while.