Meditation for June 18, 2008

From The Rev. Peter A. Munson

Romans 1:28-2:11

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.  29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice.  Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  32  They know God's decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die - yet they not only do them but but even applaud others who practice them.

1 Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.  2 You say, "We know that God's judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth."  3 Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?  4 Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?  Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?  5 But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath to yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.  6 For he will repay according to each one's deeds: 7 to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.  9 There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.  11 For God shows no partiality.

Our Need to Repent

I am tempted when I read some of the sins that Paul lists in Romans 1 to find the ones that don't apply to me!  Let's see: I'm okay when it comes to murder, out-and-out wickedness.  I don't think I'm a God-hater.  I'm not too haughty.  I don't tend to "invent evil".  I wasn't ever very rebellious toward my parents.  (Julia says my rebellion is still to come, but that's a wholy different matter.)  I don't think I'm heartless or ruthless.  The problem, of course, is there are some things on Paul's list that I'd like to quickly skip over as I read.  Have I ever been covetous?  Acted with malice?  Been foolish or faithless or envious?  Have I ever gossiped about someone or slandered another?  Been boastful?  Hmmm... the truth is I find myself in this list, and I find myself in a number of different places.  Ouch!  I suppose that's Paul's point.  He makes it even more clearly in Romans 3:23 when he says "... for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  All. As in every one of us.  As in me.

And for all the times we break Jesus' commandment in the Sermon on the Mount and judge others (see Matthew 7:1-5), Paul nails us on that, too.  "Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?" (Romans 2:3)  I think the key line in the entire passage is the latter part of verse 4, when he asks, "Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"

Think of Paul, "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1).  Paul knew from whence he had come, and that background - his own conversion experience - is apparent as he writes to the Romans.  God's kindness led to his repentance - what Eugene Peterson calls "radical life change". (The Message, Romans 2:4)  Paul couldn't judge anyone.  All he had to do was remember how he had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  All he could do was write about how he had met the risen Christ, and been forgiven, and been introduced to a radical new way of life - life in the Spirit.

That entry into a whole new way of life begins with God's kindness, God's grace, God's reaching out to us.  But there is something we must do.  We must acknowledge the truth about ourselves - that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We must acknowledge that we are "on Paul's list", in one place or another, or - more likely - in a number of places!  And then we must repent - do a 180-degree turn.  And that turn is back toward God, who made us for goodness and for love and for the creative building-up of others.

My Bible has a note on the list of sins in Romans 1.  It reads, "When we are doing wrong, we are not "just being human."  The many synonyms for "sin" that pile up here are evidence, not of our humanity, but of our loss of it.  The spiritual life is a radical recovery of our true God-created selves, our souls."  (The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, note on Romans 1:18-32)  After his conversion, Paul spent the rest of his life telling others of how amazing life could be, when we recover our "true, God-created selves."  He also made sure to remind everyone that this recovery was a gift of God, not our own doing, and that when we entered this new way of life, there was no looking back.  Why would you return to the slavery of the old way of life?  That, basically, was Paul's perspective.

Again, from The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible:  "Looking around and clucking with disapproval at what others do wrong is a time-honored way of averting detection of our own wrongs.  Cataloguing wrongs, whether in our family, our neighborhood, or the world, does not qualify as a spiritual life, and God has no patience with it."  (Note on Romans 2:1)  Another way to put it might be this:  I need to do my own work.  There is plenty to do right there, without getting caught up in what is wrong with everyone else.  And my work begins with acknowledging my sin, and repenting. 

The good news all starts pouring in after you or I do that.