October 29, 2026 - Romans 1-2

Paul begins his Roman letter by mentioning “Jesus Christ our Lord,” through whom he “received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (1:4-5).  I’m not sure I have ever really noticed this emphasis but it so clearly comports with Paul’s statement in chapter 15:  “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand’” (15:20-21).  What can I say?  The epistle to the Romans is a powerful theological treatise.  But in it’s own way, it also provides a powerful and urgent missions mandate.  On their own, men “claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (1:22-23).  How appalling!  How foolish!  Left on our own, this is what we come to.  Paul fleshes this out in his letter and reminds that we have a great message to declare, the gospel, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (1:16).  Because we all have sinned, because we will all die in our sins if something is not done, because all the man-offered solutions are worthless, and because God has provided the only hope (in Jesus Christ), we who possess that hope have this great responsibility, that is, to tell the world.

No other story will bear repeating

As often as this is told;

God’s glad good news of His love to sinners

Are tidings which never grow old.

Tell it again and again,

Tell it again and again,

The Gospel story, of grace and glory,

Bears telling again and again.   -- Ada R. Habershon (1907)