I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 1-3.

    Today’s passage is one of those which is so full of stuff that I am not going to be able to comment on everything important. Paul writes to the believers in Rome telling them how much he wants to visit them. He wants to do so in order to bring them encouragement and teaching, but he also wants to be encouraged and taught by them. I never realized before how that fits in with what he writes later in today’s passage. One theme that goes throughout this passage, and much of Paul’s writing, is that no one has any position to “lord it” over others. I am not better than you, you are not better than me. We are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. Nothing we have done, or can do, can make us right with God. Only the action of God could make us right with Him. Jesus took that action by dying on the cross. Until we have faith in the power of Jesus to make us right with God we will continue to try to force God to accept our judgement of what is right and wrong. One thing that I want to point out about Paul’s teaching here. None of us can claim to be better than others, but the converse is also true: none of us can claim to be worse than others.

    Paul points out that God has made Himself known through the nature of the Universe. We know what is right and wrong almost by instinct. Yet we often choose to reject that knowledge. Paul goes on to detail the many perversities which result from refusing to accept God and the rules by which He has designed the world to function. And those of us who acknowledge God have no basis for considering ourselves better than those because we commit the same sins. We all fall short of God’s standard. Only when the Holy Spirit enters into us and transforms us will we live a life as God desires. If we live as God desires it is not to our credit because it only happens because the Holy Spirit is moving us to do so.